


Quicksand

by devilduckieee



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-05
Updated: 2012-04-05
Packaged: 2017-11-03 02:50:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 51,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilduckieee/pseuds/devilduckieee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life in Huntington Beach has been a rollercoaster for Santana Lopez, but she's finally finding her balance and learning how to move on and forward. Agreeing to give a free surf lesson might just be the best decision of her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

> _Whatever it is you’re looking for – beauty, enlightenment, salvation, danger, or just to disappear – this will only be a fraction of what you find._ \- Taylor Steele, **Sipping Jetstreams**

_Tires squealing, heart racing, she feels the rush of adrenaline shoot through her veins as wind and rain collide against her. The rain pelts harder the faster she goes. She looks back to see where her competitor is and finds them way behind. She’s got this in the bag. She’ll pull five grand easily tonight for this cakewalk. She brings her head forward to finish the quarter mile, but it’s too late to react. Skidding tires, wet asphalt tearing through her jeans and leather, she’s tumbling over and over. No longer knowing which way is up; she collides with something hard and feels a sharp pain before everything fades to black._

Santana Lopez wakes up on the floor of her bedroom. The arm she landed on is throbbing, she feels like shit and wants to throw a shoe at her alarm. She pushes herself up, favoring her left side, and walks across the room to turn off the incessant drum and bass beats of Current Value’s _Peace_ coming from her speakers. Santana undocks her phone and checks the surf report -- on days like these it doesn’t matter, she’ll be out on those waves no matter what, but she likes knowing what she’ll be in for. The report suggests decent waves, about three to four feet that are nothing spectacular, but better than sitting on a lake with a stormy mind.

She makes her bed, listening to the waves that are calling her through her window, and does some arm stretches. Raising and lowering, curling and extending, simple things that her doctor told her to do on the days her arm acts up. Santana puts on the bottom half of her wetsuit, it fitting like it’s brand suggests, before stepping into a pair of magenta board shorts and pulling on a heather grey sweatshirt over her head. She grabs a hair tie and loosely ties her long black hair into a ponytail as she heads down the stairs. 

Santana passes through the kitchen, turning on lights and appliances as she heads to the back door. She opens it to find a tall man with wavy blonde hair and green eyes waiting for her.

“Five by, S?” The man asks, though he already knows the answer based on what Santana’s wearing. He follows her into the kitchen while putting on a brown apron with LoCoRo written in white on the front.

“Not today, Schue.” Santana lets out a lopsided smile before continuing, “Gonna get a session in before my appointment with Doc.”

“Sounds good.” Schue starts the brewing process of the typical morning coffees that keep the regulars of Lopez Coffee Roasting coming back for more and the new people falling in love at first taste. “What’s the LoCo taste of the day S?”

“I’m feelin’ the Costa Rican, let’s give ‘em a jolt.” Santana places some bread dough into the brick oven at the back of the kitchen. “You hooking up with Emma yet?”

“Santana!” Schue barks out a laugh, “No, not yet. You know she’s got some old fashioned ideals about these things.”

“Yeah, yeah, Schue.” Santana places some pastries into the regular oven before turning and looking at Schue with a serious expression, “You know, William, if you were gay, it’d be okay.”

“Why must I be the first person to see you in the mornings?” 

“Lots of people are gay, I’m half gay and everyone still loves me. I’m just saying…” 

“Go! Just go surf already, you clearly need to.” Schue throws his towel at Santana, hitting her in the face.

“Oh, how convenient, you tell me to leave when everything is ready. Couldn’t have done this earlier?” Santana throws the towel back at Schue, who is shaking his head. “Okay, okay, I’m out. Call me if you need me?”

“Yeah, like I didn’t run this place for a couple of years without your supervision or anything.”

“Shut it, old man.” Santana waves as she walks out the back door of the kitchen. She grabs her surfboard from the garage, before heading across the highway that prevented her from having beachfront property. 

Santana will never understand how her parents lucked out on such prime real estate, a mixed use building right across the Pacific Coast Highway from the beach. There were some drawbacks to living in Huntington Beach, especially during tourist season, but the perks definitely outweighed the cons. Perks like being less than five minutes, walking, to the stairs that led down to the soft sand that somehow travels with her wherever she goes. 

Another perk was that her best friend lived next door and was usually waiting for her at the top of those stairs.

“That iP4 dock is amazing.”

“I fucking hate that song.” Santana nods in greeting to the tall and muscular boy with a tightly cropped mohawk.

“It wakes your ass up though.” He takes Santana’s surfboard from her and proceeds to carry it with his down the stairs. “I swear you’d sleep through a plane landing on your house.”

“Didn’t expect to see you, Puck.”

“Yeah, well, when you don’t wake up until halfway through that song, and those fucking drums kick in, I think you wake up the entire neighborhood.” Puck playfully nudges Santana with his shoulder, “’sides, when you get that deep into it, I know it’s an emergency session day.”

“I’m that predictable, huh?” Santana quickly removes her sweatshirt, throwing it down onto the sand.

“Just to me, babe.

“You just like the free show.” Santana begins zipping up the top of her wetsuit, slowly encasing her naked torso.

“That never hurts.” Puck winks and hands Santana her surfboard. “If you’d rather be solo, I’ll go down the beach some.”

“No. You can distract me with your horrible life choices that I’ll never make.”

“Again. I think you forgot to add, again, to the end of that sentence, ‘Tana.” Puck laughs.

It’s easy enough to paddle out into the water; they were getting in at the tail end of low tide, which made wading out effortless compared to competing with 4ft and higher waves. Not that Santana, or Puck for that matter, ever let size get in their way. They’d both prefer to save their energy for riding the waves, not fighting them. 

“If we’re lucky we should see some shoulder-high sets.”

“I saw that too, but that’s hours from now. Gotta give mama some time to wake up first, you know?” Santana strokes the top of the ocean water with her hand.

“I don’t know, ‘Tana, I kinda like my women fired up.” Puck smirks and Santana laughs before slapping some water in his direction.

“Careful Puckerman, wouldn’t want the lady to think you don’t respect her.”

“Oh, no way, man. There’s only three ladies I respect with the proper amount of fear and two of them are here right now, easily within killing distance of me.”

“Yeah, that’s right and your mom is just across the street.” Santana laughs again and Puck shakes his head. 

They lapse into a silence, just letting the waves lull them into a peaceful trance. It’s easy for Santana to forget all of her worries when sitting on that vast ocean; she seems so small in comparison. Sometimes it’s the only place where Santana can properly sort out her mind, where all her distractions slip away and she can focus. She doesn’t have to think about being on a wave, in fact that’s the last thing she’d want to do. No, she likes that her body just knows what to do as she drops in and guides that board down an open face. It’s refreshing to be able to forget everything and be fully in a moment, where everything seems so clear, no decisions, only actions. 

It’s in the lull between sets where Santana gets left alone with her thoughts. Sometimes it’s helpful to just sit and think, work out any issues that need resolving. Days like today, when she’s woken up from a particularly vivid flashback, are when Santana’s especially thankful for Puck’s presence. He’s always able to provide a distraction.

“Tell me a story?” 

“Got another letter from my Dad.” Puck looks at Santana with a sardonic smile. 

“Really? How are things in New Zealand?”

“Mom still hasn’t forgiven me for the tattoo, by the way. It’s been eight years and she still curses his ‘archaic Maori traditions’ every time I bring a letter over.” Puck lets out a chuckle.

“Maybe you should stop bringing them over?” Santana smirks; she knows that’ll never happen. Felicia Puckerman likes to pretend that she can’t stand Puck’s father, but it’s easy to tell how the woman hangs on every word of his letters to their son. 

“Right.” Puck shakes his head and brings a hand to his right shoulder, “Still can’t believe she didn’t appreciate it when I told her that it was the shoulder or the face.”

“Yeah, that was one of your finer moments.” Santana leans over and smacks the back of Puck’s head.

“She cursed the hell out of Arana for that one.” Puck smiles then continues, “I don’t think he’d really let them tattoo my face, it’s too good looking as it is.”

“Yeah, cheekbones that could cut glass my friend.”

“This face had you calling out my name at one time.”

“Trust me, it wasn’t your face.”

“Fuck you.” Puck barks out a laugh.

Their conversation gets interrupted by a new set of waves coming in, a nice clean set that comes to Santana’s chest. She loses herself in the rhythm of the waves and the sounds of them breaking. Time seems endless and Santana loses track of it until she notices that the sun is visible in the sky and no longer skirting the horizon. She’s spent enough time out on those waves to tell time by the angle of the sun in the sky, but she checks her clunky white waterproof watch and it verifies that she’ll be running late for her appointment by the time she gets back to shore.

“Shit, I’m late for Doc. See ya later loser.”

“Send my love to the Doc.” Puck winks.

“Whatever. Enjoy the rest of the session. See ya tonight?” Santana begins to paddle to shore and picks up a guppy wave to help her in as she hears Pucks response in the positive. She always appreciates things to look forward to on days like these.

-x-

Santana enters the clinic with a light sheen of sweat adorning her skin. She’d taken a moment to use the bottom of her white tank top to wipe off some of the sweat from the bike ride over, but it’s always the stationary stuff after a ride that brings on the most sweat.

“You’re late.” A woman with long blonde hair and hazel eyes, who is wearing a light blue polo with a dark blue HBPT embroidered in the upper left corner, the name Quinn in white underneath, and khaki shorts, greets Santana with a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah, sorry, Q.” Santana gives a lopsided smile and a shrug.

“Caught out on the waves again?” Quinn asks and, at Santana’s impish grin and nod, continues speaking, “Let’s get that arm stretched before your tests.”

“Thanks, Q.”

“Leave it to you to exhaust yourself before the tests that indicate if you need to keep coming back or not.” Quinn shakes her head as she leads Santana to the therapy room, or gym as Santana refers to it. There are weight machines strewn throughout the room, not that she got to use them all those years ago when she first got here. It seemed to take Santana ages before she was even allowed to use a resistance band. She remembers how hard it was to train her arm how to work again, it was frustrating as hell, but at least she still had her arm.

“Flashback again, huh?” Quinn gestures to a chair for Santana to sit in.

“When did I get so fucking predictable?”

“Probably the day your femur tried to escape from your body.” Quinn grabs Santana’s arm and starts guiding it through some stretches.

“Yeah,” Santana grimaces, but doesn’t make any other sign of pain. “It’s a wicked sexy scar though.”

Quinn looks down at the scar that practically wraps around the entirety of Santana’s tanned bicep. She’s grown accustomed to seeing it after all these years of helping Santana heal, but she never fully knew how Santana would handle the mental aspect of healing. Most females tend to treat their scars like something to be ashamed of, something to hide, but not to Santana. Apparently it’s a war wound, a visible achievement for surviving something horrendous.

“Definitely more badass than a shoulder tattoo.” Quinn winks and helps a laughing Santana stand up.

“I’m totally telling him you said that.”

“Like Puck needs his ego stroked any.” Quinn leads Santana to a room with monitors with wires and various other testing instruments.

“He needs something stroked all right.” Santana winks and receives a slap to her arm, “Ouch, bitch! I’ve got to test that arm for perfection in a minute here. It’s not my fault you two are pretending like you’re not dating.”

“What?” Quinn squeaks out.

“He told me to say ‘hi’ and we both know it wasn’t a message for Dr. Hummel.” Santana rolls her eyes.

“You sure? I’m a fine specimen of man.” A tall man with brunette hair and bright blue eyes says as he enters the room.

“Sometimes I wish Puck were gay, Doc, but I think you’d be too much man for him as it is.”

“You ready to pass some exams, Santana?”

Santana looks to Quinn who gives a smile and a slight nod.

“Sure thing, Doc. Let me make this test my bitch.” 

Santana wasn’t really nervous about this final round of tests; she knew that she was as healed as physical therapy was supposed to get her. It’d been four years. Four slow years full of ups and downs, mostly ups. Even if the downs consisted of explosions of emotions and tears. Looking back at how she acted, Santana’s especially appreciative of having Puck and Quinn in her life. 

Puck had provided the stability, focus and determination to make sure that Santana healed, physically at least, from her injury. He insisted that she’d get full functionality of her left arm again and made sure to be there for the daily exercises she needed to perform. Their relationship, prior to the accident, had been extremely unusual but solid. Friends with benefits didn’t come close to the connection they shared after having grown up together. The process of regaining movement in her arm, after making sure that the tendons and muscles healed as solidly as the bone, had changed Santana and Puck’s relationship permanently. Their relationship had grown even stronger, but the romantic aspect ended. They realized that Santana needed Puck more than a no strings attached situation would afford. Santana is grateful for Puck, who pulled her through the toughest and most frustrating moments of her rehabilitation. The moments where it seemed like she’d never heal, that she’d never be able to use her arm again, not the way it was meant to be used at least, Puck dragged her kicking and screaming past the obstacle. He never let her give up.

Quinn was the inspiration, constantly telling Santana that her arm would heal so well that she’d be swinging baseball bats at Puck’s head in no time. Four years ago, Quinn had just been an intern at the clinic getting the final units she needed for her degree. It could’ve gotten off to a rocky start; Santana’s not the easiest to get along with on the best of days. Being injured and depressed only proved to make her more stubborn and irritable, but Quinn seemed to know exactly how to manage Santana. It was in Santana’s first truly horrible therapy session, where she just wanted to give up and not even try to do what Quinn was asking, when Quinn simply said with her soft and gentle voice, “God damn it, Santana, if you fuck up my internship, I’ll break your other arm.” By the time the shock (and the laughter) wore off, Santana realized that she’d successfully completed her tasks and gained a friend.

Quinn provided a quiet and constant belief that Santana would heal completely. She also became a confidant once Santana no longer needed Puck at her sessions. Which is why, when Santana had seemingly reached a plateau way before her body should have, Quinn suggested that Santana begin to surf again. The idea came with its own bundle of issues, but Quinn talked Santana through most of them and eventually got Puck on board to help convince Santana. 

It certainly wasn’t easy at first. Santana had started with just going out in the ocean, when that stopped wearing her out, she started a slow swim in the shallow waters, she took things one step at a time (moving at a tortoise’s pace) until it got her to where she is today. Surfing’s her salvation, Puck’s her constant and Quinn knew exactly what buttons to push to get Santana there. She’s not completely healed yet, but this test should prove that she doesn’t need to keep coming in regularly for treatments. Santana doesn’t kid herself about how far she’s come and she knows she wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for her two best friends. 

“That should be it, Miss Lopez.” Dr. Hummel unhooks some wires and pushes some buttons on his tablet.

“So quick?” Santana looks at Quinn, who is leaning against the massage table against the wall.

“It’s been at least an hour San, you totally zoned out there.” Quinn laughs, “Should we have tested your head for a concussion or something?”

“Ladies, at least try to keep it professional.” Dr. Hummel makes a valid attempt to look at the women sternly, but his lip quivers at trying to repress a grin.

“Pssh, whatever Doc. I saw you at Quinn’s graduation party.”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion as to what you’re implying Santana.”

“You’re right, Doc. You certainly weren’t a bit tipsy…”

“…and handsy.” Quinn adds, nodding to Santana to continue.

“Asking that one surfer with the trouty lips if his hair was made from sunbeams.” Santana smirks.

“Or asking my police officer friend, Karofsky, if the gun in his pants was loaded.” Quinn nods.

“I’d say something about that really cute boy in the blazer and tie, but I still don’t understand why you kept calling him Lion and clicking your heels together.” Santana scrunches her eyebrows and looks to Quinn who shrugs.

“You’ve been holding all this in for this precise moment, haven’t you?” Dr. Hummel sighs.

“Yup. I haven’t even started about that musically inclined one, the boy with the long hair who dressed like he was the long lost member of Aerosmith? And how you kept offering him a completely different kind of microphone.” Santana grins as she stands up and wraps her right arm around Dr. Hummel.

“Need I remind you ladies of two things? Quinn, you still have to work here when Santana is finished with her treatments. You’re about to be promoted. So, you should be careful around those with power, maybe?” Dr. Hummel raises an eyebrow at Quinn’s gasped ‘Promotion?’ He then turns his focus to Santana, “And you, you trouble maker. I haven’t even sent your tests in yet. I have all the power right now. I can change your results any way I see fit.”

“I love ya Doc, but what’s the worst that you could do to me? Make me keep coming back to see my friends and get a work out in the process?” Santana chuckles.

“Well, I tried. I really should get going to more important patients anyway.” Dr. Hummel winks before exiting the room.

“I think he’s going to miss you.” Quinn comes over and plays with a strand of Santana’s hair that’d come loose during testing. “A lot of people, well, they take this too seriously or think he’s got too much power over their lives. You see him as a peer. It really makes the work easier.”

“Well, I’m surfing now. I’m bound to sprain something.”

“Speaking of, an early session? Are you still having nightmares, Santana?”

“Been having nightmares since I was sixteen, Q.” Santana shrugs, “I’ll take flashbacks to my accident over nightmares about my parents, any day.”

“You need to deal with these things, San.” Quinn moves her hand to Santana’s shoulder, “Move on so that you’re not carrying so much weight.” 

“You need to mind your damn business.” Santana scowls. 

Quinn sighs, “You are my business. You’ve become a sister to me. I’ve taken care of your body. Now listen to me about your mind.” Quinn squeezes her hand and Santana hangs her head.

“Sorry, Q. It’s one of those days.”

“Yeah, I know.” Quinn brings her other hand to Santana’s arm and starts massaging. “I’ll give you a quick massage while telling you of a proposition I have for you.”

“A proposition? Won’t Puck get Jealous?” Santana lifts her head and grins at Quinn.

“Shut up. It’s a possible work connection thing.”

“Work? You know LoCoRo could feed and house an army if I needed, right?” 

“Yes, I do know, though the way you dress would imply otherwise.” Quinn rolls her eyes.

“Just because I like my holy jeans and well worn Dunks, doesn’t mean I’m a bum, Q.”

“How you ever get any action is beyond me.”

“You’ve seen my wicked sexy scar, right?” Santana grins. “Chicks dig scars.”

“Anyway,” Quinn laughs. “You aren’t the only patient I’ve befriended over the years.”

“You bitch!”

“Shut it, Quasimodo.” Quinn moves her hands to Santana’s other arm, “She’s a stunt woman slash stunt coordinator, who originally came to me because she broke her leg killing ninjas on some Tarantino film.”

“Kill Bill?”

“Whatever. She’s about to start work on this action film or something and was asking if I knew any surfers who’d be willing to teach her.”

“Teach her? Like, some tricks?”

“Teach her how to surf.” Quinn rolls her eyes. Santana breaks out in laughter. “Yeah, apparently that’s the reaction she’s been getting from all of the ‘pro-surfer sources’ that are usually used for this sort of thing? I don’t know.”

“She wants to plan a surf stunt having never surfed before?”

“Yes. It’s, like, an indie film and this director wants something he’s never seen before, which is why he went with her instead of someone with experience.” Quinn moves to stand in front of Santana, “Listen, she’s really sweet, Santana. I’d like to be able to tell her that you’ll help. She’s a really fast learner; she got the hang of the really difficult movements here, really easily. So, just…do it for me okay?”

“I don’t…Quinn I don’t know the first thing about teaching someone how to surf.” 

“Well, how did you originally learn?”

“My dad.” Santana shrugs, “It’s why I stopped.”

“Oh, well.” Quinn pauses and runs a hand through her hair, “Maybe this will be good for you too, a way to help yourself by helping someone else?”

Santana goes silent for a moment. She picks at the threads at the hole on the knee of her jeans. Santana feels the weight of the moment and how her decision right now might decide her future potential for healing. With that in mind, and with a hope of getting over her life’s tragedies, she speaks, “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

“Great. I’ll let her know. Thanks Santana, I owe you for this.”

-x-

Santana walks her BMX into the garage. She takes off her helmet and shakes out her hair as she places it on a shelf. Santana catches her breath for a minute. The clinic is only fifteen miles away, but the afternoon had warmed to a temperature hotter than Southern California’s norm and it took a bit more effort than Santana was expecting. Especially considering that she hadn’t eaten anything all day except a Cliff Bar on the way to the Doc. By the time she walks through the back door into the kitchen, she needs a shower, but she’s no longer sweating. She checks in with Tina to see if there’s anything that needs immediate attention before heading up and taking a quick shower.

The shower feels wonderful after the long ride and she comes out feeling refreshed. She’s got this shampoo bar that smells like jasmine and the smell of it instantly shifts her mood into a happier territory. She’d found it accidentally. 

Actually, Santana found it in the shower of one of her one-night stands, back when she used to do the random hook up thing. She no longer does that, or even wants a relationship right now. Quinn’s kind of gotten it into her thick skull that Santana needs to focus on taking care of herself. Santana knows she’s got a lot of baggage, that’s why she’s been avoiding it after all, but she really appreciates the shape her body is in now. She’s in the best shape of her life and it’s because she listened to Quinn. It’s becoming easier, knowing how to take care of herself the proper way, instead of losing herself in adrenaline rushes and hookups. It’s with that knowledge that she knows there’s much further to go. Santana doesn’t regret the way she did things in the past, it was keeping her alive, but she’s thankful to have survived it and to have come out of it with only a scar and a wickedly awesome shampoo. If Santana could remember the chick’s name, she’d probably send a thank you note. 

Quinn would probably smack her for that one.

Santana dresses in a fresh pair of slightly baggy jeans and a green plaid button down shirt, she slips on her Rainbows and goes back downstairs to the shop. 

Lopez Coffee Roasting is like every other coffee place in the way that they serve coffee and have tables, chairs, free wifi, and pastries galore. Except the seats are actually comfortable and the staff encourages customers to stay as long as they want, even when the place is packed, which is something that usually happens every two hours. Santana’s never figured out how that happens, but it’s like clockwork and it’s been happening ever since she was a little guppy riding around on her Papi’s shoulders. There are plenty of power outlets for the people with their laptops, which is something the college kids are constantly praising her for. There’s a huge purple couch in front of an enormous window at the front of the shop that looks out at the beach, it’s just about the most comfortable thing in all of existence and if it wasn’t such a staple of the shop Santana would’ve made Puck move it upstairs by now. Their bookshelves actually have books in them, and the most comfortable seats in the house have been set up to have the best lighting for a good long read. 

It’s the little things about the shop that make Santana proud to be part of this legacy. She loves that LoCoRo has the typical things that every coffee house has, but the things that stand out the most are the reasons why people insist on coming back and bringing their friends. Things like constantly brewing fresh coffee. Fresh breaded goods being baked in a wood oven. Santana asked Schue about it once, how it’s possible that they’ve gotten things as right as they have and he simply told her, ‘we care and we actually listen, when you do that, it comes naturally.’

Santana knows her parents encouraged that, an open sharing environment for the shop. Like Tina Cohen-Chang, their resident tech genius slash barista. She came up with the brilliant idea to have free phone chargers set up around the shop ‘because I know I’m constantly forgetting mine’ and Santana’s seen how that’s brought in a new breed of customer. Tina also came up with this impressive app that allows people to order from their seat in the shop or to have it ready when they came in. Santana’s never taken business classes, she’s fairly sure she wouldn’t understand half of the terms in the books telling her how she should be running things, but it’s easy to understand when Schue’s talking about ‘productivity being improved by Tina’s app’. Santana would just call it ‘less of a clusterfuck at the register.’

“William, why are we watching _Endless Summer II_ again?” Santana walks over to Schue who’s in the middle of making a fresh batch of tea for one of their customers.

“There are multiple films? All I see is some tiny person riding the same wave over and over and over and over.” Schue smiles and takes the tea out to the customer, Lauren, who’s sitting on the purple couch.

Santana goes over to the rack next to the entertainment system and picks out a DVD with a white case and _Montaj_ written in grey and orange. She takes _Endless Summer II_ out of the player and pops the new disc in. Santana’s placing the cases back on the rack when the beats of the background music come over the shop’s speakers. She turns around to check that all of the flat screen T.V.s are working properly and all showing the air bubbles that start the movie. This was one of the things she enjoyed most about her shop. As far as she knew, LoCoRo is the only coffee shop with the look of a surf shop. The T.V.s and soundtrack went perfectly with the surfboards as tables and benches, the bamboo wood floors and tiki hut styled interior. Stickers were allowed to be stuck on nearly any surface, which only helped the shop stand out as ‘not your typical coffee joint.’

“Aw, shit. Slopes must be here!” A voice called out from the opposite end of the shop. 

“Quit your yelling, Rutherford.” Santana turned around and tipped her straw fedora at him, but didn’t smile. No, Matt Rutherford would never be on the receiving end of one of her smiles, not again.

“Want me to kick him out?” Tina whispers as she’s passing by with a fresh Cinful pizza.

“Nah s’cool.” Santana shakes her head, “Can’t fuck with me here.”

“Okay.” Tina smiles and walks away.

There was a distinct difference in the styles of films that Santana shows compared to Schue, who’s more traditional. Santana gets it, the documentaries and narrative films are more appealing to a wide variety of customers and don’t distract the readers with their soundtracks. However, it’s late afternoon and even though they’re a coffee shop, Santana needs a little bit more than coffee to get past that late afternoon yearning for a nap. Which calls for exciting aerials and thumping beats, if a couple of scantily clad (or topless) chicks show up in the films, then so be it. The clientele never complains and the ones that do wouldn’t have come back anyway. Besides, they’re right across from the beach, it’s not like people wouldn’t be seeing this stuff if they looked out the window.

“I look forward to Matt’s reaction when _Stripper_ starts playing.” Schue shakes his head and grins.

“Always a classic. I wish I knew he was here when I put it in.”

“Santana Lopez, always up for embarrassing her friends.” Schue places his hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, he’s _Puck’s_ friend, if you’d even call it that. I can’t help it that I’m hot and everyone wants me.” Santana shrugs.

“How was PT?” Schue asks as they move to the stools behind the cash registers.

“I kinda zoned out during the tests.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like, I don’t know, it caught up with me, how much I’ve been through?” Santana lifts her fedora and runs her other hand through her hair. “I wouldn’t even be able to do what I’m doing right now, if it weren’t for Puck and Quinn riding my ass all the time.” Santana turns to look at Schue, who is quietly listening. She bites her lip before continuing, “Or you being here, taking care of everything so that I didn’t have to.”

“You’ve had enough to deal with, Santana.”

“Yeah, no. I know that now. I think that…before, with my parents. I was in shock, right? I couldn’t think, but I felt all this pressure. Like, I knew that I suddenly had all this responsibility I wasn’t fucking ready for.” She picks up one of the tiny umbrellas they jokingly put into their lemonades and iced teas, “But now, I don’t know. I still feel that pressure, maybe even more so now, but I understand it and why it’s there and that it’s something I need to manage.”

“That’s good, Santana. I’m glad to hear it.” Schue smiles and squeezes her shoulder.

“I’d say that twenty three is a bit old to start realizing that I should be a responsible adult, but then I look at Puckerman…” Santana winks at Schue who laughs. 

They sit there in silence, taking in the shop before them, Santana watching the video playing on the screens. This is one of the things she’s always liked about Schue, that she could sit next to him and not be expected to talk or pay attention. She could just sit and zone out if she needed.

“Your parents would be proud of the woman you’re becoming, Santana.” Schue says quietly, “They were always proud of their little firecracker, but this person you are now…the person you’re on your way to becoming? I think it’s more than they could’ve imagined.”

Santana’s eyebrow furrows, she licks her lips before letting out a shaky breath. She nods at Schue before standing up and heading over to the DVD rack to get the next movie ready. She’s looking, but not seeing anything. All she can concentrate on is the warmth that’s inside of her that she’s never felt before and how she knows that it’s a good thing. That everything will be okay, eventually. She’s so focused on her inner ramblings that she stops paying attention to her surroundings and gets surprised by arms wrapping around her waist and hugging her from behind. There’s only one person who would ever attempt that with her and after she gets over the momentary panic, she notices the smell of his aftershave.

“Hey, Puck.” Santana leans her head back against his shoulder and looks up at his face.

“Hey, babe. You up for some grub?” Puck squeezes her tighter, his way of letting her know that he noticed her zoning out. It’s one of the many things she loves about Puck, his ability to read her. 

“Starving.” Santana turns and nods to Schue as she and Puck head upstairs.

Santana doesn’t know when the tradition started. She just knows that, come dinner time on a day where she’s had a particularly rough wakeup call, Puck will show up with her favorite fish tacos and a case of Coronas, and they’ll just sit on the roof and watch the sun set into the ocean. 

Puck places his paper bag full of goodies onto the small wooden table between the two sun-bleached and weather-beaten Adirondack chairs that he and Santana settle onto. The sky is just starting to turn periwinkle and Santana is suddenly thirsty for the ice-cold beer that Puck is handing her. It’s like a placebo effect; she doesn’t even need to drink it to feel the comfort this tradition brings. 

“Rutherford was here today.” Santana swallows the ice cold liquid that’s tinted with lime.

“Shit, I told him to stay away.”

“Nah, it’s cool. He didn’t even come up to me, just yelled across the shop.” Santana shrugs as she takes a bite of her taco, the various flavors mix together deliciously in her mouth and she practically purrs.

“Yeah, but he’s in my crew. He needs to listen to my orders.”

“I can handle myself. Stop trying to send my customers away.”

“Whatever.” Puck flicks at a piece of cabbage that dropped out of his taco.

“Everyone knows I’m off limits. I’m off the table, no longer a commodity, yadda yadda. Slopes is retired.”

“I know, ‘Tana.” Puck exhales a lung full of air, trying to fight his frustration, “They still talk about you all the time though.”

“Damn right they talk. I was fucking epic!” Santana rolls up the foil her tacos came in and throws the wadded up ball at Puck.

“Bitch.”

“Slut.”

“Cunt.”

“Dick.”

“I’m glad we have such mature and intelligent conversations.” Santana grins.

The sun sets, causing the sky to appear as if it were on fire. Bursts of red and orange reflect off the sea before them. The temperature seems to drop about ten degrees in an instant, as if the sun had taken all warmth with it. 

Santana puts on the big blue sweatshirt that she picked up from her apartment on her way to the roof. “So, you got another letter from Arana?” Santana asks as she opens up another beer.

“Yeah,” Puck smiles and nods. “Just checking in, really. He’s doing this rugby charity league thing.”

“Where he freely gives out black eyes?”

“Funny. Nah, like, he’s got some of his former All Black teammates and others from various teams and leagues, to have all-star games? Like, people pay to watch these dudes play and all the money goes to various charities. Winning team decides, but they’re all good causes.”

“That sounds awesome.”

“Yeah,” Puck nods and looks down. 

“Look at you, all proud of your dad.”

“I might not have his name, but at least I’ve got him.” Puck shrugs and turns to Santana with a serious expression, “’Tana, he asked me if there was a certain cause that I’d like him to have a charity game for.”

“Yeah?” Santana inhales in anticipation, “What are you going to say?”

“I was thinking something with orphans?” Puck lowers his voice. It was a sensitive subject even though it’d been almost eight years. 

“Oh.” Santana releases a shaky breath.

“I just remember…when what happened, happened. There was this time where I didn’t know if you’d be suddenly taken away from me to live with some fucking strangers.” Puck gets out of his chair and kneels in front of Santana. “I did research and stuff, went on the internet and everything.”

Santana laughs out and shakes her head.

“It was some scary shit, San. The stuff I saw about orphaned teenagers, you know?” Puck picks up Santana’s hand and turns it over to look at the inside of her wrist, and the scarred flesh that he knew was there. “You burned yourself rescuing me when I was first learning to ride. Didn’t even think about not doing anything, not even the heat of the muffler stopped you, all you were focused on was getting that bike off of me.”

“Ohana means family.” Santana sniffles with a smile and winks.

“Dude, I’m totally not Stitch.”

“You totally are, Puckasaurus.” Santana run her fingers through Puck’s tightly cropped hair.

“Wrong fucking island, anyway. Dad’s from New Zealand, completely different language.”

“I know that.” Santana smacks Puck on the side of his head, “It’s fun to tease you though.

“I was trying to be all serious an’ shit.”

“I’m sorry. I know. Okay, go on.”

“No. You’ve ruined it. I’m done.” Puck leans back and sits on the ground.

“No, really, come on Puck.” She pulls at his arm, “I’m sorry. You know I’m working on my defense mechanism.”

“Okay.” Puck sighs, “Whānau means family, family means no one gets left behind,” he winks. “So, I wasn’t about to let you get taken away from me.”

“What were you going to do?” Santana moves down from the chair and sits on Puck’s lap.

“I got all the information printed, forms and shit, filled out as much as I could and I was going to get Ma to adopt you.”

“You weren’t.” Santana leans back to look him in the eye.

“Totally was.” Puck wraps his arms around her, “I marked a date I was going to talk to my mom about it. Literally the day before I was going to ask Ma, the word came through about Schue being your Godfather.”

Santana having a Godfather had never come up while her parents were alive. She knew that Schue and her parents were close, but she never knew how close until Schue came to talk to her that day. The ink barely had time to dry on the legal forms signing her into his guardianship, before he was at the Puckerman’s house to tell her. Santana had been staying with Puck and his mom; it hurt less than going home and having to face reality. 

“I remember tripping the fuck out.” Santana rests her head on Puck’s shoulder.

“Yeah, mostly ‘cause he didn’t tell us anything until it happened.”

“Yeah, but I get it now.”

“So, I’m going to tell Arana to play a match for orphans or whatever.”

“Look at you, being all sweet n shit.”

“Figured the Puckerman Bachelor Fund wouldn’t go over as well,” Puck shrugs.

“You’re an idiot.” Santana rests her head against his shoulder and looks at the skyline as the purple fades into black.

“I’ve got a race comin’ up.” Puck squeezes Santana closer in anticipation of her trying to move away.

“Puck.”

“I want you there.”

“Yeah? Well, I want you to quit that shit.” Santana crosses her arms around her chest.

“You know it’s not that easy, San.”

“Learn from my fucking mistakes before life makes you learn, asshole.”

“Hey, someone needs to live enough for the both of us.”

“It’s the ‘you no longer living’ thing I’m thinking about, tungane.” Santana scowls.

“Shit, look at you bringing out the big guns.” Puck hugs Santana closer, “Damn, you’re better than my mother when it comes to the guilt.”

“Well, I learned from the master.”

“Remind me to stop letting you hang out with my mom.” Puck laughs.

Arana had flown Puck out to New Zealand for his sixteenth birthday to spend the summer with him and learn all about his Whakapapa, or genealogy (essentially, if broken down into crudest definitions). From the minute Santana and Sheila picked Puck up at the airport, Puck wouldn’t shut up about all these new words he learned (amongst other things) and insisted on teaching Santana. They spent a good portion of the following year only talking to each other in that language, which quite successfully frustrated their friends, family and teachers. They don’t use it much anymore, but Santana always pulls out ‘tungane’ when she wants to emphasize her and Puck’s bond, when she feels he needs to be reminded that he’s her brother. It might not be by blood, but they’re family just the same.

“I’ll try, it’s all I can promise”

“Do or do not. There is no try.”

“Okay Yoda, this mean my lucky charm will be at my race?”

“Fine, but I can’t promise how long I’ll last.”

Puck lets out a whoop of joy and squeezes Santana closer in his arms.

“Today has been too fucking long.” Santana sighs as she leans against Puck.

“Nah. Today was just right for the amount of things you needed to accomplish.”

“Look at you being all zen-like.” Santana chuckles and yawns at the same time.

“I’ve been known to have my moments of brilliance.” 

“Any brilliance you might have, came from me.” 

“Maybe, but it goes both ways.” 

“M’sleepy,” Santana curls her body into Puck’s and rests her head against his chest.

“Want me to sing it?”

“Mmm,” Santana nods.

Puck starts to sing, his voice soft and heartfelt. It’s a song he’s sung to Santana so many times he’s lost count, the original intention behind singing it has changed, but the lines still ring true to him. Especially his favorite verse, “ _n’ if I had a million founds of chances, I would spend ‘em all on us. N’ if I had a million dollars and cents to spend it wildly, I would spend it all on something I could trust._ ”

He softly sings the song until he’s sure that Santana is fully asleep in his arms. With her dreams regularly featuring nightmares and flashbacks, Santana was prone to falling asleep in random places, especially when in his arms. Puck finishes the song in a whisper while he stands up, cradling her in his arms. He carries her downstairs, lying her down in her bed, before crawling in behind her. The only way they had found that she’d sleep through a whole night.

“Night sis,” Puck whispers before kissing her on the crown of her head and going to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Santana wakes up to a banging in her head and it’s not the unrelenting drums of her wake up track. She sits up in her bed, resting on her elbows, as she tries to place the sound that woke her up. Santana looks at her dock; the digital numbers tell her that she had a good thirty minutes left before she had to wake up. Half an hour of quality sleep time and it’s ruined by some jackass banging on the door of her shop, a shop that doesn’t even open for another forty-five minutes. This asshole isn’t going away though, judging by the fact that Santana was woken up at all by the knocking. 

“Thirty prime and precious minutes fucking wasted all because some ass doesn’t want to make a home brew,” Santana hates being woken up early.

Santana plods down the stairs, pulling on some board shorts, a black and red short that she stole from Puck years ago, and a black hoodie, because she’s not about to put a shirt and bra on for this asshole. The person is still knocking and it doesn’t help Santana’s mood any when she accidentally jams a toe of her bare foot into the edge of a counter while trying to turn on some lights. Santana gets to the front door of the shop and just stands there, debating whether or not she actually wants to deal with this person, but they probably already noticed the lights turning on and…fuck, a whole half hour. Santana unlocks and opens the door to find this tall, blonde haired, blue eyed, Goddess standing before her with impossibly long legs in a pair of illegally short denim cut offs and grey sweatshirt that’s been redesigned to expose a tan and muscular clavicle, shoulder and arm. 

It’s too fucking early for this shit and now Santana is hallucinating. Santana stands there for a good minute, waiting for the hallucination to go away, or do something, except the hallucination is just standing there staring at Santana.

“Hi!” The stranger smiles, her teeth beautiful straight and white, and it if she hadn’t just woken Santana up -- way too fucking early -- she might spend some time considering how beautiful that smile actually is. But she had a full thirty minutes left and she prefers sleeping in as long as she can, more than a beautiful girl any day. 

“We’re not open yet.” Santana grumbles, her voice raspy from sleep, and she’s pretty sure that a scowl has permanently affixed itself to her face.

“That’s the point, silly.” This beautiful stranger rolls her eyes and giggles and Santana wonders if she’s still dreaming -- some wonderfully elaborate and painful dream that has somehow turned into one of those Japanese cartoons that Mikey and Puck were always watching. Thinking of it now, this blonde could totally be that Sailor Princess or whatever her name was. From that show with the dude in the tuxedo and the sailor outfits…and yeah, it’s too fucking early right now, because Santana’s brain just stalled on picturing that and it just makes her even more pouty.

“Quinn told me to,” the woman makes air quotes before continuing to speak, “Show up at the butt crack of dawn to catch Santana when she heads out.” She smiles again, before it drops and a half-worried half-confused expression takes its place. “You are Santana, right?”

“I am.” Santana really kind of wants to kill Quinn right now, but that could be the lack of sleep and caffeine talking.

“Awesome!” The woman visibly bounces and Santana squints at the unnecessary amounts of energy being put forth in front of her. “I’m Brittany.”

She’d say something vitriolic if it wasn’t so damn cute to see.

“So, here’s the thing.” Santana leans against the doorjamb, “My manager doesn’t come in until late morning today. It’s not usually an early surf day and I really want to kill Quinn right now.”

“Oh, crap.” Brittany’s eyes widen in realization, “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” Santana runs a hand through her hair, “It just means we can’t start right away. So, you can go back home and crash or stick around for some coffee.”

“I hear it’s pretty good.”

“Better than that corporate mermaid on Main.” Santana smirks.

“Hmm.” Brittany smiles, “We’ll see about that.” She brushes by Santana, finally stepping through the threshold of the shop.

“Oh?” Santana closes the door and follows Brittany, “You think you know something about coffee?”

“Maybe.” Brittany’s smile is coy and Santana suddenly forgets that it’s too early for the smile that is on her face to be there.

“Like what?” Santana moves to the kitchen, indicating with her head that Brittany should follow.

“It’s brown water.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be shitting me.” Santana turns around with her eyebrows raised. Brittany doesn’t make eye contact, just keeps on smiling as she gives a soft shrug. “That’s it, out. Out!” Santana makes shooing motions with her hands.

“Okay, okay,” Brittany laughs out when Santana resorts to trying to push her out of the kitchen, “I might’ve worked for that mermaid for an extended period of time.”

“Seriously?” Santana asks, fighting the distaste from showing on her face. Brittany nods. “Ugh, now you really need to get out. We don’t want your kind here, sabotaging the beans, stealing my secrets. Go on now, git!”

“Why would I ever want to hurt innocent beans?” Brittany looks up at the back wall of the shop, made of square shaped drawers, each one labeled with a particular type of bean, “Besides, you’ve already wooed me to your side just for having Kona in house.”

“Kona, really?” 

“The mermaid was a bit stuck up about their Kona.” Brittany shrugs and watches as Santana takes the container of green Kona beans out of its drawer and carries them to one of the roasters in the kitchen. “Your shop reminds me of Hawaii.”

“I’ve never been, but thanks.” Santana heads back to the coffee wall, putting back the Kona and grabbing the first in the line of LoCoRo’s regular morning options. It was nice not having to think up the LoCo of the day for once and it had been a while since she’d tasted the Kona.

“You haven’t?” Brittany sits down on a stool, watching as Santana seemingly dances through her morning routine.

“Nah, always wanted to though.”

“I thought all surfers went to Hawaii. It’s, like, a thing?” Brittany scrunches her eyebrows together.

“I mean, one day when I decide to take a vacation, sure.” Santana laughs as she starts placing the dough of their various morning pastries on baking sheets. “But it’s not mandatory, you know?”

“It’s not?”

“Nope. Hey, can you get the door for me?” Santana motions with her head to the brick oven, her hands full from holding the pizza peel loaded with ready to be baked goods. “I’m not that kind of surfer.”

“What kind of surfer are you?” Brittany closes the door after Santana clears the oven.

“Thanks.” Santana smiles, then moves over to the now roasted beans. “I guess the mainstream term is soul surfer. I just surf ‘cause it helps clear my head.”

“And keeps you hot.” Brittany nods.

“That’s never been a problem.” Santana winks and Brittany laughs. “It did help me with my P.T. with Quinn though.”

“She’s amazing at her job.” Brittany joins Santana by the coffee grinders and starts helping her with the various grinds. “I mean, she was still an intern at the time, but Quinn was able to motivate me in a way no one else has before. The other stunties were amazed by how fast I bounced back.”

“What’s that like?”

“Stunting?”

Santana nods as she pours the Kona grounds into the ‘LoCo taste of the Day’ container.

“You’d think I’d come up with a decent answer by now.” Brittany hands Santana the next in the row of fresh grounds, “Some days it’s the greatest thing ever, other days you remember that it’s a job and you have to force yourself through certain things.”

“You don’t like it?”

“No. It’s not that.” Brittany grabs the hand that Santana had put out to grab the next set of grounds, but there weren’t any, so Brittany plays with Santana’s hand instead. “I love it. I’m practically made for it. Throwing myself through windows and doors, walking into walls, all part of my everyday life that I don’t get paid for.” Brittany smiles.

“And I have to teach you how to surf?” Santana laughs.

“Yup, you’re stuck with me.” Brittany’s eyes twinkle with mischief and she finally lets go of Santana’s hand.

“At least you know your body.”

“Oh yeah, I know my body real well. I’m all sorts of flexy.” Brittany winks. 

A loud revving of a motorcycle engine breaks through the not-so-awkward silence that had engulfed the two women. Santana rolls her eyes.

“What’s that?”

“A Puckerman.” Santana shrugs, doing her best to ignore the noise.

“Taaanaaa!” A deep voice booms from outside the shop.

“An annoying Puckerman.” Santana sighs and heads to the front door of the shop, “You’ll scare off the customers – what the fuck is that?”

“Isn’t it great?” Puck gestures to the bike that’s currently nestled between his legs.

“It’s…green.” Santana blinks. It is. The bike is the type of green that makes one think of sour apples that have been dunked into a vat of nuclear substance. It’s so green; it practically glows in the early morning light. The scripted chrome that reads ‘Ninja’ can barely be read on its bright background.

“Fuck yeah! No one else has the balls to ride this shit.”

“No one thinks as much of themselves as you do, Puck.” Santana shakes her head.

“I’m awesome.” Puck grins.

“No, you’re not. Don’t lie.” Santana winks, then remembers that Brittany is standing behind her. She moves out of the way and makes introductions.

“Is that the ZX-14R?” Brittany asks like it’s no big deal.

“Yeah, babe. Any time you want a ride, just let the Puckster know.” Puck winks. He would, that ass. Santana rolls her eyes.

“You ride?” Santana leans against the doorjamb of the shop, watching Brittany inspect Puck’s new toy.

“Crotch rockets?” Brittany laughs at Puck’s affronted squeak, “No. I mean, I know them well enough to do something impressive at work, if needed.”

“Work?” Puck scrunches his brow, “Oh! You’re that Brittany.”

“Which Brittany did you think I was?”

“Nah, I just thought you were Santana’s new girl or something.” Puck shrugs.

“Thanks Puck, glad to know you think I’m a slut.”

“A slut with taste.” Puck winks.

“I’ll just pretend like you’re not actually talking about me like I’m not here.” Brittany pokes Puck in the arm.

“Ouch, sorry.” Puck rubs his arm, “Hey, want a ride?”

“Is this a sex thing?” Brittany looks from Puck to Santana, who laughs.

“No, he just wants to show off his new toy.” Santana smiles with adoration at Puck, who is grinning like a kid on Christmas morning.

“Don’t you want to go?”

“No.” Santana stiffens and stands.

“She doesn’t ride anymore.” Puck provides.

“Puck.” There’s a threatening edge in Santana’s voice. She coughs and speaks again, her voice much closer to its normal octave, “Go, check out his toy. I’ve got to change before some customers get here and think I’ve completely lost it.

“’Tana, you never had it.” Puck winks and Brittany laughs.

“Well, okay, if you’re sure.” Brittany bites her bottom lip. Santana nods, unsure as to why Brittany was asking for permission.

“Go, ride that fourteen hundred four stroke like it’s meant to be ridden.” Santana smiles and waves them off with her hand. 

When Santana hears Puck and Brittany get back, the shop is full, Tina and Becky are helping her hold down the fort, _Sipping Jetstreams_ is playing in the background and Santana’s dressed in her customary work garb of well worn jeans and a purple, grey and white plaid flannel button down shirt. She looks up at the numbers of the large flat digital clock in the center of the wall of the shop that isn’t one giant window. It’s almost mid morning; Schue should be there soon to take over. The sound of a wave breaking sounds over the soundtrack of the surf film, indicating the front door being opened (Santana thought it was kind of cheesy, but after being caught unawares while reading by a customer too many times without it, it is a necessary evil and at least it’s not a fucking bell.). Santana looks up to see Brittany walk in, attempting to fix her helmet hair, and Puck following after. 

“The hell did you go?” Santana laughs and the two approach her counter.

“Cruised down PCH,” Puck shrugs.

“I had to get him out of a speeding ticket in Dana Point.” Brittany rolls her eyes and laughs.

“Yeah, well.” Puck ruffles the hair on top of his head and grins.

“Sorry officer,” Brittany opens her eyes wide, seemingly making her irises even bluer, “It was my fault. You see, I’m just so worried about my sister, that I kept telling him to drive faster so we could get to the hospital sooner...”

“You’re something else, aren’t you?” Santana laughs.

“Yeah, something evil.” Puck grins. “It actually fucking worked.”

“No way.” Santana turns to Brittany in disbelief, “Damn you blondes. That shit never works for me.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got to be good for something.” Brittany shrugs and looks up at the menu of the day, written in chalk, behind Santana’s head. “Can I get that Kona now, and a banana muffin?”

“You really did work for the mermaid.” Santana shakes her head.

“Why would I lie?” Brittany tilts her head and scrunches her brow.

“’Cause they’re trying to impress ‘Tana, for some reason.” Puck sticks out his tongue, a gesture that Santana swiftly returns. “Never works though, as soon as they order their coffee she can tell. Hell, I can tell.”

“Oh, that’s sad.”

“You’re in luck, Brittany, a fresh batch of muffins just came out of the oven and the LoCo taste of the day is being brewed as we speak.” Santana goes to fetch the items for Brittany and calls over her shoulder, “Puck, stayin’ or goin’?”

“Goin’.”

Santana nods and gets a thermos out of a cupboard, purposely picking the red one to clash with Puck’s new bike, and fills it up with coffee. She then grabs a mug and fills it up with the Kona blend and brings both over to the counter, along with Brittany’s muffin and a cinnamon raisin bagel for Puck.

“Thanks, San.” Puck leans over the counter and kisses Santana on the cheek, then turns to leave. “I’ll hit ya later.”

“Don’t get into too much trouble, ass.”

“Why is he going to hit you later?” Brittany looks at Santana quizzically before taking a bite of her muffin, “Oh my God, that is mouthgasmic.” 

“Yup. We got it goin’ on.” Santana smirks and shrugs.

“You do. Can I, like, live here?” Brittany takes a sip of coffee and hums in pleasure. “Seriously, you put drugs in your products.”

“I like you.” Santana laughs.

“I like you too.” Brittany grins.

“C’mon, let’s get you started on that surfing tip.” Santana lifts the partition in the counter for Brittany to walk through and then offers her arm for Brittany to hold, once Santana’s closed the partition. “Hey, Chang, you cool till Schue gets here?”

“Yeah. Got it, Santana.” Tina nods and hands the customer at the counter their order.

Santana leads Brittany out through the back door of the kitchen and around the back to her garage, which sits separate from the main building. Not many people are allowed into the garage, it has become one of Santana’s hiding places. Not that it’s all that good of a hiding spot, people obviously know when she’s in there, but she’s lucky enough to have the sort of people in her life who know not to bother her when she’s in the garage unless it’s for something important. Santana doesn’t even remember the last time Puck had been in there.

She opens the door and flips on the light to her sanctuary, letting Brittany go in first through the threshold. Having a relative stranger enter her space is an unbelievably uncomfortable experience for Santana, but she tries to play it off like there’s nothing unusual about this moment. It’s just another garage, half full with surfboards and wetsuits, and the other portion housing a half built café cruiser with tools scattered on the floor around it. Santana ignores the pictures of her parents, Puck, Mikey and Quinn on the wall, pretending that they’re just random people intermixed with all the posters of perfect waves being surfed. 

“This is so cool.” Brittany looks around at the garage, a delicate smile on her face.

“Thanks.” Santana shrugs, runs a hand through her hair and heads to the back, where the longest surfboards are lined up in their racks. 

“Why do you have so many?” Brittany runs her hand along one of the shorter boards, cyan blue edges and only about six feet in length.

“It’s a hobby I dabbled in.” Santana shrugs, forcing herself to focus on the boards before her, trying to pick out the perfect one for Brittany to learn on. It’s not like it mattered all that much in the scheme of things, but Santana believed that the boards spoke to her and the one calling out Brittany’s name would be the one to make the process a whole lot easier for Brittany to learn. If Brittany’s first experience with surfing is a good one, then she’d be much more likely to continue on surfing, long after her movie finishes filming. 

“You made these?” Brittany whips her attention to Santana, a hint of awe in her voice.

“Yeah, used to.”

“Wow.” A hand wraps around Santana’s bicep and squeezes, Brittany’s grip feels like it’s burning through the flannel of Santana’s shirt and Santana doesn’t know if it’s supposed to mean something or if she’s just that uncomfortable with someone being in the garage with her. Brittany distracts her thoughts with a whisper, “They’re beautiful.”

“I, uhm, yeah…purple.” Santana grabs a longboard with a purple surface from the rack in front of her and lays it down on the two sawhorses next to her. She grabs a rectangle block, about an inch thick and two inches wide, from the cubbyhole next to the horses. “I’ve gotta wax your board, it won’t be that long, but you might want to sit anyway.”

“Oh, okay.”

“I’m assuming you don’t have a board.” Santana unwraps the block and begins applying the wax in quick, short, back and forth motions along the surface. “Actually, I’m hoping that you don’t have one, ‘cause you really shouldn’t be trusting no retail bitch who’s just there to get you to buy shit you don’t need.”

“No, Quinn kind of warned me not to get one before talking to you.” Brittany shrugs.

“Quinn apparently talked a lot about me.” Santana tries to hide the annoyance in her tone, but she knows it slipped through. She’s still working on her more acidic personality traits.

“Oh, no. It’s not like she’s going around all willy nilly and pimping you out to people.” Brittany sits up on her stool, focusing her attention towards Santana. “It’s just that she was, well, she knows me.” Brittany shrugs. “Like, she was my first non-stunty or film related friend since moving out here from Ohio.”

“Ohio?” Santana looks up, surprise visibly apparent on her features.

“Yeah, a place that has weather.” 

“Certainly explains how you’re living here, but have never surfed before.”

“I guess.” Brittany shrugs.

“Wait.” Santana puts down the wax and turns to Brittany, “Perhaps I should’ve asked this first, you can swim right?”

“No.” Brittany schools her features into a rueful look, before breaking out into laughter. “Oh, you should’ve seen your face! There are pools in Ohio, Santana.”

“Shut up.” Santana laughs and throws a small hand towel that had been lying on the floor next to her at Brittany. “I didn’t want to assume and get out there and then, like, suddenly you’re drowning or something.”

“I’d imagine that I wouldn’t get that far in my industry if I didn’t know how to swim.” Brittany plays with her hair, visibly trying to fight a smile from showing on her face.

“So, you were saying that Quinn’s your only friend?” Santana tries to change the subject. She picks the block of wax back up and continues applying it to the surfboard.

“Not my only friend, just the only one who realized that I might need certain assistance in some aspects of life.” Brittany shrugs. “So, when I mentioned to her my current situation, she informed me that I shouldn’t even step into a surf shop without you.”

“I knew there was a reason I kept her around.”

“It’s not ‘cause she’s hot?” Brittany smirks.

“Oh God no.” Santana shakes her head and looks to Brittany, “Well, I mean, yes. She’s very beautiful, but it’s not like that.”

“Good, ‘cause I think she has a thing for Puck.” Brittany nods.

“How much time do you spend with Quinn? I thought Puck and I were her only friends.”

“When I’m in town, I usually kidnap her for a weekend and take her up to my place in Arrowhead.” Brittany shrugs. She looks over to the other side of the shop, “That’s a nice bike you’ve got there.”

“Thanks.”

“Triumph, right?”

“Yup.” Santana’s movements become a bit jerkier in her application of the wax.

“Steve McQueen’s TT Special 650?”

“Yes.” Santana’s movements stop as she lifts her head to look at Brittany, “Most people don’t know that.”

“I’m not most people.” Brittany winks.

“That is definitely true.” Santana smiles and shakes her head. “The Great Escape was my Papi’s favorite movie.”

“He’s got awesome taste.”

“Yeah, he did.” Santana lowers her head and resumes preparing the surfboard. She knows she needs to deal with the loss of her parents, but talking about them to someone she’s just met…well, Santana’s just not ready for that yet.

She finishes preparing the board, stands up and moves over to the wall holding at least twenty wetsuits of various sizes. Santana looks at Brittany for a moment before looking back at the suits and choosing a suit and taking it off the rack.

“I’m assuming you don’t have a wetsuit either.”

“Wetsuit? But, it gets so warm outside.”

“Yeah, but the water pretty much stays at sixty degrees so…” Santana holds the suit out for Brittany to take.

“Oh.” Brittany takes the suit and looks at it.

“It’s clean, I promise. I kind of have this thing about cleanliness.”

“Oh, no. It’s not that. I just, uhm,” Brittany bites her lip. “Am I supposed to wear anything under it?

“That’s up to you.” Santana shrugs.

Brittany shrugs, lays the wetsuit over the surfboard and lifts her shirt up and over her head. Santana’s eyes widen at the realization that Brittany wasn’t wearing anything underneath, and was apparently going to change before her. Santana coughs and moves towards the door to the shop.

“I’m just, uh...” Santana coughs and shakes her head, wondering where this girl came from. “I’ll give you some privacy and go up and change into my own suit and be right down.”

-x-

Wetsuits aren’t sexy. They’re water dynamic and fit the body like a glove, but they always give the appearance of being bulky. Santana’s never really thought about it before. It’s just been a part of her life ever since her Papi took her on her first wave at seven months old (not that she actually remembers that). She notices it now, though. Now that Santana’s fully awake and has had her coffee, it’s helped her realize that Brittany isn’t some hallucination, Brittany is very much real, and Santana’s definitely attracted to her. 

Santana’s never been more thankful for the full body wetsuits than she is right now on the beach with Brittany. It’s hard enough not getting distracted by Brittany’s smile, twinkling eyes and flowing hair, but if this was, like, Maui and they were just in bikini’s? Santana’s not sure she’d make it through the lesson without trying to kiss Brittany. It’s not a bad way of having a good time; Santana’s used the surf lesson technique many times to reel in many a person. She’s just trying to turn a new leaf, now. The random hookups never filled in the holes she was trying to fill, no matter how hot the person or fantastic the sex. So, the wetsuit will help Santana tame her libido, keep everything in check long enough for her to properly teach her student. She just wishes that she didn’t pick out that blue wetsuit instead of the traditional black, ‘cause the blue of the suit just seems to make Brittany’s matching colored eyes even more vivid. 

“Are you trying to teach me telepathically?” Brittany’s voice seeps into Santana’s ears. Santana shakes her head, swearing that it was Brittany who had been in her head, using her eyes as some sort of trance inducers or something.

“Uh, no. Just trying to think of the best way to do this.” Santana smiles and tilts her head slightly, trying to sell her statement.

“Oh, okay. That would’ve been cool though. I could’ve brought you home to talk to my cat. I’m sure he gets bored trying to hold conversations with me when I can’t talk back to him.” Brittany scrunches her nose, “Well, not in my head at least.”

“Sorry?” Santana laughs and drops the surfboard down on the sand. “Do you work out?”

“Are you asking me on a date?” Brittany tilts her head; the afternoon sunlight reflecting off of her blonde hair temporarily blinds Santana.

“What?” Santana squeaks and takes a step back, “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Please, I don’t need cheesy pick up lines to get dates.” Santana rolls her eyes and crosses her arms across her chest.

“I’m glad you know that.” Brittany winks. Santana shakes her head.

“I was just wondering if you do stuff like pushups and yoga? It’s not essential, you know, to surf, but it’ll help the process.”

“Oh, yeah. Totally.” Brittany nods.

“Cool. You ready?” Santana smiles and moves to the top of the board.

“Let’s do this thing.” 

“Okay, so this is your board. This one is a longboard, they come in all sorts of sizes, you know, but this one is generally the easiest for people to learn on. It’s more forgiving and gives you more to work with than a short board.”

“Yeah, but they were the first, right?”

“Did you research this shit?” Santana laughs and Brittany gives a bashful shrug and smiles. “That stuff doesn’t matter right now, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Just go ahead and lie down on your board, Brittany.” Santana watches as Brittany seemingly rolls her body down on top of the purple board and then she points to a bright yellow stripe in the middle that runs the length of the board, “This stripe lets you know where the middle of the board is, you want to keep it in line with the middle of your body.”

“Why?” Brittany shifts over a bit, making sure she was aligned.

“It’s a balance thing. If you don’t have balance, things will go wrong, you know?”

“Like life.” Brittany nods, “Or flipping through a window.”

“Yes, like those, Yoda.” Santana laughs. “You want to make sure that your toes are at the back of your board, it’s like a sweet spot or whatever. It just helps.”

“Do this often?” Brittany winks.

“Shut up.” Santana laughs, “I’ve no clue why Quinn sent you to me, but whatever. Put your hands to your chest like a military pushup except a little wider, right, and then push up. That gets you to your knees, yeah. Like that.” Santana nods and smiles encouragingly at Brittany who is hovering on her arms and knees above the board, “From that, you want to bring your leg forward, lining up your foot with your hands in the middle of the board and using your back foot to stand up.”

“I think Quinn knew that you wouldn’t try and take advantage of me.” Brittany says as she stands up, with good balance, on the board and smiles at Santana.

“This method is, like, for beginners. Like, totally basic, just to get people up and riding a wave. I’ll teach you how to pop up later, Britt.” Santana coughs, “Brittany, I mean. It’ll look better in the film, a lot less clumsy.”

“Britt.” Brittany smiles and stands up straight on her board, looking at Santana.

“No, you want to stay low on your board. The lower the better, what?” Santana looks up at Brittany when the girl doesn’t squat back down.

“You called me Britt.” Her smile is even larger now as she looks down at a confused looking Santana, “That means you like me.”

“Or I’m just lazy.” Santana smirks, raising an eyebrow.

“Nope.” Brittany shakes her head, “You like me. You want to keep me. You gave me a nickname. We only name the things we want to keep around.”

“It just slipped out.” Santana was sure her cheeks were darkening out of embarrassment. She felt like she was spinning out of control underwater and Brittany was the wave.

“Okay, San.” Brittany winks and bends her knees, “Like this?”

“Uh, yeah.” Santana brushes her hair out of her face, trying to fight the grin that wants to place itself on her face, “You want to make sure that the line passes through the middle of the arches on your feet. Then, just remember to keep your knees bent and have your arms out for balance. The lower you are, the better your control is over the board.”

“Sounds like it’s a good thing I’ve got strong thighs.”

“I’m sorry?” Santana blinks.

“Like, it’s good that I do a lot of squats in my regular workout, right? It’ll help me stay low and in control.”

“Let’s just focus on standing up first, Britt.” Santana nods.

“And here I was mainly doing it to have junk in the trunk.”

“You can’t possibly real.” Santana laughs.

“Believe it, babe.” Brittany winks, “Now, let’s get on some waves!”

Santana carries the board to the water for Brittany, letting her get used to the water, and the waves crashing against her, without having to concentrate on not losing the board. It doesn’t actually take that long for Brittany to stand up, even shorter for her to remain standing after realizing that attempting to bounce, clap and shouting, “Look Santana! I’m doing it!” wasn’t conducive to staying up on the board. Something told Santana that if Brittany were given enough time, she’d somehow figure out how to get away with it. Once Brittany figures out how to stand without any problems, Santana stops paying as much attention on the technique of it all and begins body surfing long with her. 

It always felt amazing to be on the ocean, being carried by this sheer mass of endless energy. Santana doesn’t really care that she didn’t have a board beneath her feet, being on the ocean meant more than that now, more than having to surf every wave, constantly looking for something bigger and better – for that illusive perfect wave. Sure, the bigger waves gave her more to play with; more of a challenge, but it makes her just as happy to ride these one-foot waves with her body. Santana gets why her Papi taught her now, she lost sight of it for a while before she stopped – before everything went to hell, when all she was worried about was showing the boys on her high school surf team that she was the one to beat. ¬

Santana hopes that Brittany’s not just doing this for a job. The woman is a natural. Santana has seen many a jock attempt to surf, athletic ability doesn’t mean shit sometimes. She’s glad that it’s working for Brittany. That Brittany is giggling and laughing and apparently having a good time, even attempting to put her toes on the nose. Santana shakes her head; leave it to this enigma of a woman to have no fear of failure. She decides to just float for a bit, looking up at the cloudless sky and letting the ocean rock her like a baby. Santana learned, after ending up way too far down the beach than she’d originated, how to allow herself to float without getting carried away by the waves. She doesn’t want to go too far now, especially with a beginner learning how to surf. If Brittany managed to slice her head open with a fin, and Santana was too far down the beach to do anything, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself. So, she floats, but keeps her ears open for Brittany’s splashes (or giggles), using Brittany as a tether. It was surprisingly easy for Santana to do for some reason. Whenever she did this with Puck or Quinn, she’d inevitably end up further down the beach than intended, having confused them with surfers or swimmers that were just passing by. There was something unique about Brittany that made it easy for Santana to zone in and concentrate on, Santana just doesn’t know what it is. 

“Hey.” A whisper says next to her ear and Santana nearly has a heart attack at the sudden closeness of someone near her. Maybe she was wrong about it being easy to focus on Brittany if the woman was able to sneak up on her like that.

“Whoa.” Santana places a hand on Brittany’s shoulder and moves her legs in the motion of an eggbeater, trying to regain her breath and balance from shooting up so fast.

“Sorry.” Brittany giggles, “You okay? I didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

“I’m fine, just need to learn how to breathe again.” Santana takes in a huge breath of air and coughs, “Shit.”

“It’s just that we’ve been here for hours now,” Brittany moves a strand of hair out of Santana’s face. “I’m kinda sore and tired and hungry.”

“Hours?” Santana looks at her clunky white watch, the numbers beneath the G-Shock logo indicating that they had, in fact, been out on that ocean for hours. “Shit, sorry.”

“No, it’s good. I think I learned a lot.” Brittany smiles, “The basic mechanics, I mean. I was just worried that you were going to get carried away by the ocean before our second lesson.”

“Nah, Mama takes care of me, always brings me back to dry land.” Santana taps the top of the water with her hand and winks at Brittany. She tilts her head and starts slowly swimming to shore, Brittany following right behind her.

“Mama?” 

“My mom used to refer to the ocean that way.” Santana shrugs, “It’s not like she was religious or anything, so I don’t know if it was in reference to a particular religion or spirituality or if she was just referring to Mother Nature.” Santana picks up the purple board and heads towards the stairs of the beach. She feels Brittany lift up the other end, making it lighter and less cumbersome. “It just always seemed right for me, you know?”

“Respect your mother.” Brittany nods.

“’Cause if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” 

“It makes sense. Like, if she’s having a bad mood, the sky’s all dark and gloomy and her waves all sorts of big and scary, you might want to stay away.”

“Yeah or extra cautious when you go out.”

“I have to do that with stunts sometimes.” 

“Yeah, like what?”

“Well, you just need to always be aware of what’s going on around you, you know?” Brittany shrugs, “Like, it might not be the best idea to jump off a helicopter during a hurricane.”

“You’ve done that?” Santana blinks.

“Not during a hurricane, I wasn’t about to get on that helicopter.” Brittany shakes her head and tugs the board to stop Santana from walking. She switches the surfboard to her other arm. “The director was an asshole who kept trying to insist that it’d make the shot better. I explained to him that if he didn’t postpone the shoot, he’d have a hard time finding stunties that were willing to do his films.”

“Whoa, are you some, like, big name or something?”

“Not really,” Brittany laughs, then nudges Santana to continue walking. “I was totally bullshitting.”

“Nice!” Santana laughs.

“Well, I mean, I am friends with some people you’ve probably heard of, but that’s business. They’re not like Quinn, you know?”

“Yeah, I think I get it.”

“Though if they heard that this director was willing to kill his stunt people to get a shot, you can bet they’d be all over him; blacklisted, no matter how much money his films earn.”

“Jumping out of a helicopter though, that must’ve been crazy.” Santana opens the door to her garage.

“That’s not the hard part,” Brittany shrugs and helps Santana put the board away. “It’s the landing on a mark, and looking pretty while doing it, that tends to cause issues.”

“Crazy.”

“Yup.” Brittany grins, “Hey, I’ve gotta go. There’s a meeting with the director that I need to get ready for, but thanks for today.” Brittany leans over and kisses Santana on the cheek, “You’re really sweet, being all nice and teaching me how to surf and everything.”

“No problem, Britt.” Santana knows she’s blushing now, but she’s hoping that the heat on her skin is from being in the sun for so long. “Just drop by whenever you want your next lesson, I’m usually around.”

“I will, if just for the coffee.” Brittany winks.

“You got it.” Santana’s eyes widen as she sees Brittany reach for the zipper of her wetsuit. “I’ll just, uh, let you be. Go ahead and leave the suit on the bench when you’re done. I’ll take care of it later.”

“Okay.” Brittany chuckles. “See you later Santana.”

“Uh, yeah. Bye, Brittany.”


	3. Chapter 3

Santana loves Lopez Coffee Roasting. She often thinks that if she didn’t own it, she’d be spending all her time here anyway. The drinks are excellent, the food is delicious and the atmosphere is so relaxing. There are much worse ways to be making a living than sitting on a stool watching surf videos and holding conversations with some intelligent and laid back people. Her favorite thing though, if she was being perfectly honest with herself, was Schue’s pizzas. Santana’s fairly sure that the night crowd comes just for the wood stove baked pizza dough with fresh vegetables that were picked from Schue’s garden. There’s just something different about it being freshly made. It’s the best pizza she’s had in her life and she gets to have it whenever she wants. It doesn’t keep her from calling Schue a dirty hippie for having a garden, though. That’s just the way that they work. LoCoRo was unique enough as it was, but a coffee shop that served pizzas caused more than a couple raised eyebrows at first, but then they tried the vegetarian and vegan friendly pies and were on board. 

Her pizza has just come out of the oven, all fresh and steaming, and she can feel her mouth watering in anticipation of taking that first bite, when she hears her name called. Santana looks over to find a tall Asian man wearing the most amazing purple Nikes she’s ever seen and a fedora that matches. His straight leg Levi’s, white t-shirt and pewter grey vest seem completely lackluster in comparison.

“Mikey!” Santana squeals, drops her pizza on the counter and runs towards him. 

“Hey Tana.” He wraps his arms around Santana and lifts her off the ground and twirls her around in a circle.

“It’s been too long, my 360 is missing you.” Santana winks.

“Can’t have that.” Mike smiles and places Santana back on the ground.

“We’re in the same town man, what doess a girl gotta do to get one of her best friends to visit her?” Santana heads back to the counter where her precious pizza is waiting for her.

“Yeah, well, you know how the _Family_ is.” Mike sits on the stool next to Santana and steals a freshly cut slice of pizza.

“Whatever, LoCoRo is neutral ground. You should be able to come here whenever you feel like.” Santana sits down on Mike’s lap and takes a bite of her pizza, purring in contentment. 

“This place is anything but neutral, Tana.” Mike laughs, “You know The Twelve consider you to be my little sister. That’s so far from neutral.”

“Only helping my point.” Santana rolls her eyes. She knows that being the little sister to such a high-ranking member of The Dragons is a serious thing, but she still sees her “brother” as ‘little Mikey Chang who couldn’t remember how to tie his shoes’. 

“It’s safer for you if I don’t visit often.” Mike strokes Santana’s hair.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I mean it. Especially now, Santana.”

“Are you okay?” Santana turns to Mike, concern covering her features, “You know Puck and I always have your back.”

“That’s what I –“ Mike cuts himself off before looking around the mostly empty café, “The Twelve aren’t happy with Puck right now.”

“He never was one to play by the rules for long.” Santana shrugs.

“Yeah, but they’re not too happy with me right now either, so I can’t smooth things over.”

“Wait, why’s your Dad – er, I mean, The Elder – mad at you?”

“I’m trying to get out.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You know I never wanted to be in the family business.” Mike takes another slice of pizza and Santana waits for him to continue, “Well, I saw an opportunity and I’m taking it. Father won’t be able to do anything about it ‘cause it’s perfectly in line with The Dragon Traditions.”

“That’s great Mikey.” Santana hugs him.

“For me, but if Puck doesn’t watch himself…”

“Any way you could take him with you when you leave?”

“I’ve been working on it, but things don’t look good. They want to teach him a lesson.”

“Fucking Puckerman.”

“Exactly.” Mike nods, “Why are we friends with him again?”

“Life would be really boring without his lame ass, that’s why.” Santana winks. She stands up and heads to the entertainment system, pulling out a drawer underneath it that contains a slew of video game cases and a couple of controllers. “What’s the game of the night, bro?”

“I’m feeling in the mood for a bit of nostalgia wrapped in a brand new package.” Mike grins and starts cleaning up their dinner.

“Pilgrim it is.” Santana closes the drawer and turns on the console instead. She remembers that LoCoRo is still open for business. She looks out into the dining area where there’s a couple of regulars, “Lauren, ‘Cedes, John John, Aphasia, any of you mind if me and my bro play some xbox?” The customers shake their heads and get back to their books or conversations.

“Put some good tunes on in the background, though.” Mike comes up behind Santana, handing her the flash drive he took off his keychain. “You know that chiptune soundtrack will get old fast.”

“Good point.” Santana takes the drive and plugs it into the console. She hands a controller to Mike. “Is this one of your exclusive mixes?”

Growing up with Mike ensured that Santana was well versed in nearly every single form of music that existed. It started with him always having his Walkman on, playing whatever cassettes he could afford or whatever his “brothers” threw out. Puck started bringing his dad’s boombox whenever he knew Mikey would be around so they could all listen to the music, since Mike had a habit of forcing them to listen to a track if he liked it. It was a bit cumbersome to constantly take the headphones on and off. Plus, with the boombox, they could watch Mikey dance. It made sense that he was constantly listening to music because when he danced, it was as if he became the music itself. Then, one year for Mikey’s birthday, Santana convinced her parents to get him this mixer that he’d been wanting, and that was when Mikey started making his own mixes.

“Yup. I brought it to give to you anyway.” Mike shrugs, “So, might as well share with the masses.”

“Thanks Mikey.” Santana pushes play on the music and then engulfs him in a hug. Mike has this way of layering multiple tracks and the most random things into one cohesive track that was amazing, sometimes hilarious, and always able to get people grooving. This already sounded as amazing as his other works. Who knew that _Tipsy_ went so well with _Mmm Bop_? 

“No problem, Tana.” Mike ruffles her hair and pulls her down onto the faded orange couch that was next to the register wall in case any customers came in during their game. 

“Let’s show those exes whose boss.”

Santana pushes start and guides them through the entry screens. They choose their usual characters of Stills and Kim, not that it matters in game play, but they’re used to Puck always wanting to be ‘the dude who wins the girl’ so they never even think of playing Scott. Certain things in gaming become second nature, like automatically looking for your usual avatar and to randomly change to something else would cause them to spend the entire time temporarily forgetting who they are after every load screen. 

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has quickly become one of Santana’s favorite games to play. The glossy 8-bit game design, loading screens and game play all take her back to her childhood. Back to when Puck first moved next door, he was ten and she was eight, and his mom had found an original Nintendo system at a thrift store with a couple of games “for cheaper than one of those new games the kids are playing now days” as his mom would say whenever Puck complained about the old system. Santana thought it was the coolest thing ever, though. She didn’t really have any friends until Puck came along, so she didn’t know what she was missing. Santana just knew that it was like going to an arcade, but she could play as long as she wanted and not have to pay. This game reminded her of all of her favorite games, but also allowed her to play as a girl character, which was something that never occurred back in the day.

They get engulfed into the game that reminds Santana of _Battletoads_ , but Mikey insists on it being more like _Double Dragon_ , so they just don’t talk about it anymore. What matters is that they get to relive all of their favorite childhood games in one new title, while fighting evil and listening to Mikey’s awesome mixes. Santana doesn’t get to see Mikey enough and she knows he feels the same way about her. 

“Do the thing, with the thing.” Mikey says and Santana’s fingers automatically do that thing. They’ve been playing co-ops and multi-players for so long now that there’s no questioning of commands. This sense of trust and of knowing how the other thinks actually served them really well back when Santana was racing. With Mike as her race sensei (as she liked to call him, if purely due to the fact that it always made him roll his eyes) and Puck as her technical guru, they could just say a couple of words and she’d know exactly what to do to win her race. You can never account for fate, though, as Santana learned. 

“Throwing.” Santana says as her character throws one of the enemies across screen in Mike’s character’s direction. It’s not like this was an overly complicated game that took lots of thinking, it’s just that some habits were hard to break. Habits like letting her partner know what she was up to, even if it didn’t matter in the slightest. 

They’d gotten pretty far into the game when the splash, signifying a customer entering the shop, came over the speakers. 

“Time out, Mikey.” Santana immediately hits pause and looks up. 

The first thing she notices is that her and Mike had drawn the attention of the patrons of the shop, who were now sitting in the chairs next to the sofa and had been watching the game. The next thing she notices is the sound of a familiar, yet new, giggle coming from the direction of the front door. She looks over to find her new friend, Brittany, walking into the shop holding the arm of a tall, skinny man with stylish brown hair, and black horned rimmed glasses, who was wearing a blue plaid flannel button down over a white graphic shirt and khaki cropped capris. Brittany was now dressed in dark blue skinny jeans, black motorcycle boots and a daft punk t-shirt. Well, it used to be a t-shirt. A pretty awesome band t-shirt that Santana only slightly winced at its nearly complete dismantling, but she had to admit that the cropping choices that Brittany had made definitely helped the shirt look really sexy on her tall and lean frame. Santana just hoped that Mike didn’t have conniption. 

“Brittany?” Santana wasn’t expecting to see the woman for a while, certainly not the same night.

“Hey San!” Brittany ran over to Santana and gives her a big hug, “Today was so awesome! I just wanted to thank you again.”

“It’s no problem.” Santana laughs and shakes her head. She looks at the man who just walked up to them with a smile on his face, “This your boyfriend?”

“Art?” Brittany giggles. Art winks at Brittany, which only causes the woman to laugh harder. “No, he’s the director. Well, I mean, we did once, but that was a while ago and I think we’ve both decided we like people more similar to ourselves.”

“Right.” Santana squints, not really sure what Brittany was saying. She turns to Art and holds out her hand, “So you’re the director who is shooting a surf film with a girl who has never surfed before?”

“I like to keep it raw.” Art shrugs as he shakes Santana’s hand, “Though, to be fair, it’s not a surf film. It just has this one scene, but it’s important to the character’s journey.”

“You two want anything?” Santana gestures to the menu above her head.

“Ooh, that Cinful Pizza please.” Brittany looks to Art, “We can share?”

“Sure, sounds good.”

“And some jasmine tea please.” Brittany smiles at Santana, whose fingers slightly falter at their punching in the order.

“Sure thing, Britt.” Santana returns the smile, then looks to Art with her eyebrows raised.

“The same.” He nods.

“Excellent. Excuse me.” Santana looks over to Mike who was involved in a conversation with John John, “Hey Mikey, you up for some Sin and Jaz?” He nods in affirmation and returns to his conversation with the world famous surfer. Santana looks to Artie and Brittany, “I’ll just make a large batch for the four of us to share, on the house. That is, if you don’t mind.” Santana fingers some hair behind her ear. “I mean, if you just want to sit on your own that’s cool. I didn’t mean to assume.”

“Santana, it’s fine.” Brittany places her hand on top of the one Santana had been resting on the counter, “We came to talk to you, actually.”

“Awesome. Just go join Mikey on the couch.” Santana smiles at them, before looking over to Mike again and saying, “Hey Mikey, this is Brittany and Artie. Brittany and Artie, this is Mike Chang. Keep each other amused while I go prepare this shit.”

Mike shakes his head and laughs at Santana’s amazing sense of professionalism, but waves to the two new people anyway.

“This is a pretty killer mix you’re listening to, what is it?” Art sits on the chair recently abandoned by Aphasia.

“Thanks, it’s mine, actually.”

“Really?” Brittany sits on the opposite end of the couch from Mike.

“Yeah, it’s, like, a hobby, I guess.” Mike shrugs.

“It’s awesome, I’m practically seeing dance moves in my head.” Art says, looking to Brittany.

“I know, me too. Or like that one scene in your second film?”

“With the montage?”

“Yeah.” Brittany nods and looks to Mike with a soft smile, “I like your hat, Mike.”

“Thanks.” Mike runs his fingers along the brim, “What film are you two talking about?”

“Oh, that doesn’t matter. It was crap.” Art says.

“Artie Abrams, you take that back right now!”

“Sorry Brittany,” Art sighs. “She hates it when anyone talks bad about something they’ve made.”

“Excellent philosophy, Brittany.” Mike nods, which causes a giant grin on Brittany’s face.

“Told you.” She turns to Art and sticks out her tongue.

“Anyway,” Art rolls his eyes, “What matters is that I was still looking for a music supervisor and I think I just found him. That is, if you’re available.” 

Brittany claps her hands and bounces in her seat in excitement.

“What?” Mike blinks, “Sure. I mean we might have to work on schedules and what? Dude, you just met me.”

“Mikey, is your body being propositioned again? I told you, if it’s in the shop I get ten percent, finders fee and all.” Santana places a teakettle and the large cinnamon sugar pizza on the table in front of her friends, then goes to get cups.

“She’s just kidding.” Mike says to an amused looking Art and Brittany, “That was just one time, ‘Tana.”

“Whatever, I want my ten percent.”

“Art just asked Mike if he wanted to be music supervisor on his film.” Brittany grabs a plate and a slice.

“Shut the fuck up.” Santana looks to Art, “You weren’t kidding about raw, were you. How do you find your actors? Just pick random strangers up off the street?”

“Talent is everywhere, Santana.” Art shrugs, “I’ve got a vision and I want to do my best to bring that vision to film as accurately as possible.”

“’Tana, be nice.” Mike whispers before taking a bite out of his desert. 

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be rude, dude.” Santana pours everyone some tea.

“It’s cool, I totally get it. The way I do things could seem really whacked out.” Art swallows some tea, “Just consider this though, do you like the music playing right now?”

“Duh.” Santana grins and bumps her thigh into Mike’s shoulder.

“So do I. Now, where else have you heard mixes like this?”

“Aside from Mikey’s other stuff, nowhere.” Santana takes the fedora off Mike’s head, places it on hers, and sits down between him and Brittany on the couch.

“Exactly,” Art nods and leans forward in his chair, looking at Santana. “This style hasn’t caught on yet. I’ve heard others trying to do something similar, but they haven’t been able to do it the way that your friend does. At least, not in the way I think it should be done.”

“Cool.” Santana smiles, looks to Mike, “Dude, I told you you’re the shit.” Mike just laughs and shakes his head.

“I’m in a position where, not only can I take advantage of the affordability of a new artist, but I can also showcase them in a way they haven’t been before.” Art takes another sip of tea.

“He likes opening doors.” Brittany nods and starts playing with Santana’s hair. Something that Santana’s trying really hard to ignore.

“That’s awesome and all, but a newbie surfer doing a wicked awesome trick? It sometimes takes people years to even come close to feeling comfortable enough to turn on a board.”

“Did I seem to be having problems, San?” Brittany pouts.

“No! No, sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you suck, Britt.” Santana places a hand on Brittany’s thigh in apology, “Most people aren’t like you, able to just stand up and start doing things on their first go.”

“Oh.” Brittany furrows her brow.

“I’ve known her for some time now, Santana.” Art places his empty cup on the table, “Brittany’s capable of coming up with some of the sickest stunts I’ve seen. If I had any doubt that she wouldn’t be able to pull something amazing off, I wouldn’t have asked for her.”

“I’m really not questioning your motives.” Santana holds her hands up in front of her in an apologizing manner, “It just seems crazy to my brain, you know? Plus, having been a life guard in high school, I’m just cautious about people playing with tides and stuff.”

“Aww, you care!” Brittany hugs Santana.

“She’s something else, isn’t she?” Santana looks at an amused Art and does her best to not blush.

“You’re stuck with her now that she likes you.” Art nods solemnly.

“Hush you two. I’m awesome. You should feel lucky to be in my presence.”

“I know I do.” Mike nods and laughs at Santana’s gasp of ‘traitor’. He gets up and cleans up the plates and pizza, carrying them to the kitchen.

“Art, while he’s gone,” Santana turns to Art. “I just want to say thanks for presenting this opportunity for Mikey. Please, just be patient with him. Things are a bit complicated right now, but I know this is something he’s always wanted to do.”

“See? I told you she was sweet.” Brittany hugs Santana again.

“Sweet and spicy,” Art nods and checks his watch. “I need to go Brittany, I still have to meet with someone in Malibu and I’ve an early call tomorrow.”

“Okay Artie,” Brittany stands up and hugs him goodbye. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Art, you’re leaving?” Mike says as he’s coming out of the kitchen.

“Yeah.”

“Cool, I’ll walk you out.” Mike walks grabs Santana in a hug, “Bye, Sis. I’d stay longer, but…”

“Yeah, no. I know you’ve already been pushing it by being here this long.” Santana puts the fedora back on his head, “See you at Puck’s thing?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Stay safe, Mikey.”

“Stay alive, ‘Tana.” Mike winks, heading for the door.

“It was nice meeting you, Santana.” Art shakes her hand, “I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”

“Yeah. If you’re ever in the neighborhood, stop by.” Santana and Brittany wave at the two boys as they pass by the front window.

“Hope you don’t mind me staying behind.” Brittany turns to Santana, “I’m just too wired right now and I’d rather be with someone than alone in my hotel room with too much energy. The last time that happened, I got a little too carried away with my dancing and broke the mattress and television.”

“So, you’d say that doing stunts comes naturally, then?” Santana bumps her shoulder into Brittany’s before going over to the entertainment system and turning everything off.

“It’s a way of life.” Brittany nods.

“I believe it.” Santana moves to the front door and locks it, “It’s past closing time, but you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like, Britt.”

“Awesome, do you have any more tea?” Brittany bounces over to Santana, behind the counter.

“Really?” Santana laughs as she looks to the wall of teas that’s behind her, set up similarly to the wall of coffee, but set up slightly differently to prolong the tea’s freshness. “No more caffeine for you, missy.”

“That’s probably for the best.” Brittany nods, a serious expression on her features.

“I’ll brew some fresh. Go ahead and get comfortable wherever, I’ll bring it out when it’s ready and I’ve cleaned up a bit.”

“Okay.” 

It doesn’t take long to clean up, actually. It’s mostly putting away the dishes that Mike set to dry and making sure that everything is off. Santana’s really particular about things being clean and tidy, especially when it comes to her kitchen, and it’s something she’s passed on to her crew. It’s nice not having to clean up at the end of the day, particularly when Santana’s got somewhere else she’d rather be spending her time. Like, out front drinking tea with this crazy girl she just met, but acts like they’ve known each other for years.

“Nice selection.” Santana walks over to the big purple couch in front of the shop’s window. She places the brewing pot and two porcelain cups down on the wooden side table and sits down.

“Yeah?” Brittany turns to Santana, pulling a knee up onto the couch and tucking her foot beneath her other leg.

“Yup.” Santana smiles, “It’s my favorite spot. Especially when it’s raining and I’ve got a fresh mug of something hot.” Santana pours the golden liquid into one of the white cups and hands it to Brittany before pouring herself a cup.

“Definitely not raining, though.” Brittany looks to the window. The coastal fog had rolled in; the orange street lamps illuminate the fog, giving the appearance that they were captured in a bubble with soft grayish orange clouds as walls.

“Living in the clouds isn’t so bad.” Santana sips her tea and curls herself up onto the couch, her head resting against the back of it.

“Is this your castle on a cloud?” Brittany smiles and mirrors Santana’s body.

“I guess?”

“Your happy place.” Brittany sips her tea, reminding Santana that she was holding some of her own.

“Sometimes,” Santana shrugs. She finishes her tea and sets her cup back on the table. Turning back around, she takes in the soft features of Brittany’s face and the shadowed crevice from the scar on her eyebrow brought into contrast from the orange glow of the window only furthering the sense of estrangement from reality that Santana’s feeling. 

Santana forgets that she’s staring, partially due to Brittany staring back just as much, but also because of the day catching up with her. Spending hours in the surf and the sun had tired her out, but she hadn’t allowed it to creep up on her until now. She’s having trouble keeping her eyes open, but she wants to keep them open long enough to burn this moment into her memory. Not that there’s anything overly special about it, except it just feels right. 

“Is it right now?” Brittany whispers around a yawn.

“Yeah, it kind of is.” Santana nods. She feels safe, for once she’s not actually worried about what the other person is thinking, or about the ten million other things she’s usually thinking about at any given moment. Santana’s just sitting on the couch, practically falling asleep, with someone she’s basically just met, but she’s not sure she’s ever felt this calm and content before. There’s just something about the way that Brittany is just sitting there, seemingly taking everything in as well, quietly looking, that suggests to Santana that she’s feeling the same thing in this moment. 

She’s felt calmed by Puck so many times in her life. He’s practically the only one who could ever possibly get her to calm down on one of her freak-outs, and she’s felt protected and safe because of him for about as long as she’s known him. She almost felt content once, too. There was always something missing though. Santana realizes now that Puck couldn’t get her thoughts to go away, to completely disappear and just let her be in the moment. This moment that she’s experiencing right now, staring into Brittany’s eyes holding a wordless and thoughtless conversation is completely new to her and she’d analyze it more if she could concentrate on anything but keeping her eyes open.

“Good,” Brittany whispers, reaching across Santana to place the cup on the side table with the pot and Santana’s. Santana wants to know what happens next, but her eyes win the battle and fall closed, remaining that way for the rest of the night. The last thing she feels, before succumbing to sleep, is arms wrapping around her and laying her down along the length of the couch and a warm, comforting, weight on top of her, lulling her into an even deeper sleep.

-x-

Santana’s really thankful that it was Schue who found them the following morning; if it were Puck she’d never hear the end of it. Schue woke her up with a squeeze to her shoulder and a firmly spoken ‘Santana’ and she awoke, startled, and semi panicked when she realized that she couldn’t move. She’d looked down and realized there was someone on top of her, someone who was just waking up herself, someone who had the most adorable sleepy expression on her face that had lines from the wrinkles in Santana’s shirt.

“I let you sleep as long as I could, Santana. It’s opening time though; you might want to move upstairs or something.”

Santana hadn’t slept until opening since her accident. She’d think that Brittany drugged her tea, if Santana hadn’t brewed it herself. 

It wasn’t awkward either, waking up having spent the night with their bodies tangled. Santana thought it would be, but she couldn’t think of anything to say and it’s not like she was going to complain about one of the best nights of sleep she’d had in ages. Brittany just smiled, said good morning, kissed Santana on the cheek and left the shop. Santana had been feeling pretty good ever since, actually. Something about Brittany forcing her to just enjoy the moment had given Santana a natural high for the rest of the week. It was enough to distract her from race day.

Except, race day was upon her now. She’d decided to skateboard to the location, in hopes of prolonging the inevitable. The distance was one in which she’d usually use her BMX to travel, but she really didn’t want to have anything to do with bikes right now. Well, not anymore to do with them. It’s just that it was going to be difficult enough to fight her flashbacks with the sound and visual triggers that would be surrounding her, but to be on something with two wheels and handlebars – she was scared of making a scene. 

The first race night that happened after her crash, the first one that Santana was out of the hospital for, she’d mistakenly thought that it’d be no big deal. Santana had been the Queen of those streets for years and one pesky little accident wasn’t going to keep her from cheering on her friends. She was dealing fine with all the sounds and sights and grew cocky. Santana decided to sit on Puck’s new bike at the time and someone gave her a playful shove, telling her that she’d be back to racing in no time. But the momentary sense of falling, paired with the peeling out of tires, revving of engines and the feel of the bike between her legs sent her into a full blown panic attack. The world seemed to close in on her. She couldn’t breathe and when she tried to run away, her body wouldn’t move properly and got caught on the bike. 

Puck and Mike had been glued to her side the entire night, questioning her even being there in the first place because it seemed too soon. Santana’s stubborn, though. She insisted she’d be fine and the boys had insisted on staying by her side the entire night, which proved to be the best decision of their lives because they were there to catch her, bring her down and keep her safe. It wasn’t until that night that things clicked in Santana’s mind, how close she came to dying. She found irony in her life almost being taken away by a vehicle accident, just like her parents’ lives had been taken away from her. The catalyst for the reckless life she’d come to lead had almost been the cause of her life being extinguished.

It was her first time going to a race since that night. Santana was fairly sure that the years in between, filled with mental and physical exercises had helped her heal, at least enough for her to not be triggered. Santana’s still completely frightened of getting on a motorcycle again, not even to ride bitch with Puck, but they’ve been working on the sight and sound responses, and she’s learned tricks for calming herself when she feels the panic settling in. She wishes she could be on the ocean right now, with its soothing sounds and rocking waves, gliding across the water like it’s the simplest thing in the world. 

Santana promised Puck that she’d try, though. So, she took out her skateboard in the hopes that surfing the concrete waves that are the streets of Orange County would be enough to keep her calm. The long surf to Westminster Boulevard, where the unofficial entrance to an abandoned naval base is, consists of skating the beach trail most of the way. The ocean air permeates her skin, the smell on the air helps her pretend that she’s just casually longboarding on a really long and epic set. It gets her into a good mental place, prepared to deal with whatever might come up tonight, she hopes. 

By the time she rolls by the entrance, the races have started. Headlights from the motorcycles illuminate the crowds gathered to watch, make bets, hook up or race. It’s loud, the relentless hum of various people revving their engines crashes against Santana like she’s trying to swim out in high tide during a storm. She’s managing it though; it’s just loud and annoying instead of causing her breath to hitch. There’s a momentary relief in her when she hears the familiar mixing of Mikey’s that he gave her. He must’ve known she’d come and had given her a map to find her way through the hysteria through his music. Santana stops skating and kicks up her board, catching it in her hand and placing it under her arm. She fights her way through the crowd of onlookers. The groupies that always form around The Dragons were there, well the street bike division at least, needless to say they liked to diversify and dominate in multiple arenas and each subdivision had their own unique brand of groupie.

Santana had loved the devotion of the crowds when she was the Queen of them, mistakenly thinking that their idol worship could replace the chasm left by her parents’ loss. Not that she thought like that back then, but now she sees what she was doing. These people mindlessly throwing themselves towards the gang now gives her a case of nausea. She can hear their whispers as she passes and they recognize who she is, who she was. Santana does her best to ignore them and just push through the crowd. When she finally does, it is to the vision of Rutherford up in Puck’s face, yelling at him. With the commotion of the crowd, the beats of Mike’s music and the sound of the engines, Santana couldn’t hear what was going down, but she knew it wasn’t anything good.

“Slopes!” Matt had looked over and saw her emerging from the crowd. He’d put his charming smile on his face, but all Santana feels when she looks at him is a freezing chill that leaves her with goosebumps she can’t shake. She never trusted the guy and if it hadn’t been for her standing as head bitch and sister to Mike, he had made it clear that he wouldn’t have taken no as an answer. 

“’Tana, hey,” Puck rushes over, taking her board from her and wrapping her shoulders in his other arm. “How you doing? I still think it was stupid to come here by yourself, by the way, what if you freaked out again?”

“Shut up Puck.” She curled herself into his chest, breathing in the comforting smell of his aftershave, and instantly felt calmer. “I needed to do it.”

“Yeah, I know, babe.” He kisses her on the crown of her head. “Thanks for coming. You just let me know if you need to leave. Any time, okay?”

“Gotta face my fears sometime, Puck.” Santana nods. She looks over at Rutherford who’s talking with a group of other riders, “What was that all about?”

“It’s nothing a win wouldn’t clear up.” Puck steers her towards Mike, who has a grim look on his face. It hits home exactly how serious Mike was last week when he talked with her.

“Puck, you need to quit this shit.” Santana grabs his arm.

“Hey, I’m good. Slopes’ brother an’ all.” He winks.

“That was years ago, Puck. I’m no longer in it; I can’t protect you when you fuck up anymore.”

“Look, can we fight about this after my race? I kinda need my head in the game, San.”

“Whatever, asshole.” Santana sighs, “You’re going to kick their ass. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it.”

“Damn right.” Puck grins and kisses her on the nose in thanks.

Santana apparently cut it closer than she would’ve liked to the beginning of Puck’s drag. Before she knows it, he’s being called up to the line for his heat. He stands out in the crowd, with his neon green bike and black leather jacket with The Dragon’s logo on its back, his signature helmet that sports a neon green mohawk was in place as well. There is a sudden case of nostalgia that overcomes Santana, an anticipation that always came with getting to watch Puck do his thing had risen up in her, causing her to bite her lip. His competition didn’t matter, it was someone from a much lesser gang trying to step into the big boys arena, but Santana always worried, even more so now.

The signal goes and tires squeal, smoke erupting behind them as the bikes take off. Santana feels the thrum of adrenaline rushing at her from the crowd and running through her veins. She realizes that she’s shaking, like she’s had far too much coffee, when Mike comes up behind her and wraps her in his arms. 

“Breathe, Santana.” Mike says into her ear and she does. Santana inhales the leather of his jacket and the scent that she can only describe as Mikey, and it centers her. She practices her breathing exercises, calming down and barely registering Puck’s win. Santana’s so focused on her breathing that she doesn’t notice that Puck’s returned from his race until he’s right in front of her, picking her up and twirling her around.

“Yeah! Lucky charm worked like a charm!” He smiles, though Santana can see the worry in his eyes.

“You’re brilliant.” She says when he puts her down on the ground, “Can we go now? You know I hate this.”

“Yeah, just give them some time to collect my winnings?”

“Fine.” Santana sighs.

“’sides, I want these bitches to all be jealous that I get to hang with the hottest chick here, who just happens to be the best female –“ Puck coughs from Santana’s punch to his gut. “Sorry, best rider, of either sex, you happy now?”

“No.”

“Can’t blame a guy for tryin’.”

“Shut up, Puck, or I’m telling Quinn that you still think I’m hot.” Santana raises her eyebrow pointedly.

“Whatever, s’not like we’re dating.” He shrugs.

“You are. The only people who apparently don’t see it, are you and her.” Santana smacks him upside the head.

“Ouch! Hey, precious cargo.”

“Precious my ass,” She rolls her eyes.

“You know –“ Puck gets cut off by a jarring screech of tires and of metal crunching. They look over to the stretch of road that is being used as the drag route to see that the bikes of the racers had somehow collided. Santana sees the bikes burst into flame followed by the dull thud of the explosion and panic seizes her.

_Everything is black. Santana feels like she’s been strapped down to something, but weightless like she’s being carried. She feels the pitter-patter of water falling on her face before it stops. She tries to open her eyes, but it’s so hard to concentrate with all the pain. The pain is all over her body, she can feel a couple of tugs in certain sections and then she hears beeping. She tries to move her arm, maybe there’s something covering her face, preventing her from being able to see, but her arm is tied down to something. Or she can’t move it. Santana can’t really tell._

_“Santana, I’m here. Stay with me, baby.” Puck’s voice is in her head, staying away the panic that was slowly settling in, but the beeping is still there and growing steadily louder in her head._

_She tries opening her eyes again and succeeds momentarily, seeing nothing but a bright white ceiling and a man she doesn’t know in a rain dampened white uniform top. Her eyes close heavily, like it took too much work to keep them open. Santana doesn’t know where she is, what’s happening or why she can’t move. She just knows that everything hurts, there’s so much pain, and she feels so heavy. It’s like there’s this gigantic weight slowly settling down on top of her, making it harder and harder to breathe. She tries opening her eyes again, but they won’t budge. She tries to breathe, but it’s like she’s forgotten how and that loud annoying beeping in her ears just seems to get louder and faster until it just becomes one constant beep with no interruptions._

_“Don’t you dare die on me, you fucker.” Santana hears Puck yelling at someone. He sounds so far away, though. She wishes she knew where he was, so she could latch on to him. Santana wishes that she knew where she was, but she’s just surrounded by the darkness and she just can’t seem to…_

_The next thing Santana’s aware of is waking up in a pale blue room that smells like stale air and antiseptics, her head feels really fuzzy, but at least her eyes are opening for her again. She blinks her eyes open and tries to use her left arm to sit up, but doesn’t budge. She registers a tug in her shoulder that she knows should be associated with pain, but her head is too fuzzy to acknowledge it. Santana continues blinking her eyes, thankful that they’re finally listening to her again, and looks around the room in an attempt of figuring out where she was. A hospital, apparently, it explains the smell at least. She sees Puck dozing in a chair next to her bed, holding her hand, and Mikey next to him, sleeping with his head on Puck’s shoulder. Her boys, her family, right there next to her in this suddenly unfamiliar world._

_They startle awake at the wracking sob that’s apparently coming from her body. She must be crying, her face feels damp, but she can’t be certain of anything right now. Everything seems so muted._

_“’Tana,” Mike speaks first resting his hand on her knee. “Thank goodness you’re awake.”_

_“Tuahine, don’t you ever scare me like that again.” Puck squeezes her hand; she sees it more than she feels it. She must be on some wicked strong drugs or something ‘cause everything just feels distorted._

_“Where –“ Santana croaks out, her voice raw and her throat dry._

_“You’re in the hospital. You had a bad crash,” Mike tells her calmly, in the way that only Mike could._

_“Dude, you died in the ambulance!” Puck holds the straw in a cup of water to her mouth, “Heart stopped and everything -- scared the shit out of me, San.”_

_“Scared the both of us, pretty bad.” Mike nods_

_“Your bike is totaled from that truck that came out of nowhere.”_

_“Bikes can be fixed or bought, but you can’t.”_

_“I think I’m just going to go back to sleep now and hopefully I’ll wake up from this nightmare.” Santana nods and closes her eyes._

_“Santana…”_

“Santana!”

“Focus!” 

“Normal breaths, Santana, in and out. In and out.” Mike’s voice is easy for Santana to latch on to, her reaction is immediate and her body naturally listens to his instructions. It’s easier, this time, concentrating on Mike’s voice and letting him guide her like he has for so many times in the past. Santana’s senses are coming back to her now, Mike’s familiar scent surrounds her and comforts her with every inhale. She feels his strong arms wrapped around her body, their fingers interlocked as he snugly makes her hug herself. Mike’s cheek is against her ear, softly commanding her body to calm down. He is inhaling and exhaling along with his instructions, and Santana can feel her chest expanding with every inhale of his. 

It always feels as if Mike has built a protective bubble around them whenever Santana has one of her episodes. Like he’s a superhero whose power is to turn them invisible or pause the world or something that was able to keep out all distractions and let Santana be able to completely focus on him. Maybe Mike was telepathic and he was able to mentally control her body when she couldn’t. Whatever it was, it was a magic Mike was an expert in. Santana’s breathing on her own now and Mike’s grip is slowly loosening.

“Sneaks!” Puck’s voice calls out from somewhere behind Mike and Santana. She feels Mike jerk his head around to find Puck.

Santana’s glad she’s come down enough to register that much, but she knows there’s still a long time before she’ll be able to walk on her own tonight. Her body, whenever she slips into one of these episodes, completely locks up. It’s as if everything shuts down while her brain is busy flashing back to a different time, she’s usually shaky and stiff for a day (if she’s lucky) afterward and even then it usually takes a full week for her to trust her body enough to leave her house. The soreness is something she’s gotten used to, having gone through so much physical therapy for her arm; pain is a total non-issue. What bothers her the most is that her balance gets completely fucked by these episodes and she can’t trust herself to surf or ride her BMX without killing herself.

Mike lifts Santana up easily and cradle carries her to his car.

“Wasn’t too hard getting through the crowd, hope you don’t have too many people sized dents.” Puck opens the back door to Mike’s WRX. “How’s she doin’?”

“She’s fine.” Mike angles his body and Santana’s into the back of the car to lay her down softly. “’Tana’s back with us now and breathing on her own.”

“They’re getting better.”

“Yeah, the episodes are less severe, but…” Mike crawls out of the back after securely seat belting Santana down with all three seat belts and closes the door. 

“I know.”

“You shouldn’t have made her come.” Mike looks Puck in the eyes.

“I was just hopin’ she could see my last race, you know?”

“You couldn’t promise that.” Mike crosses his arms.

“I didn’t, but I won for her.”

“You won for yourself, Puck. You know The Twelve wanted you to lose.”

“No one would’ve believed that.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s what they wanted.”

“Listen, what they really want is me out of their hair, right?” Puck shrugs, “Well, here’s me going out as one of their Champions.”

“It’s never that easy, you know that.”

“What’ve I got left to lose?” Puck tucks his hands into his pockets. 

“That’s what I’m worried about.” Mike shakes his head and walks around to the driver’s side. “You need to get your head on straight before they straighten it for you, Puckerman.”

Mike gets in the running car and looks back at Santana, who is staring at him.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. Can you talk yet?” He can see her body shivering, the muscles convulsing after having been too rigid for a prolonged period of time. Mike sees her open her mouth, but no words come out. He doesn’t need to see her shake her head to know the answer, but he sees it anyway. “Okay. That’s perfectly fine Santana. You know it’ll come back soon, probably before I get you home. You just speak up whenever you can until then, okay?”

Santana gives a shaky and short nod then blinks in a series of three fast and four slow blinks, a signal they came up with that means ‘thank you’ from Santana, but that she’s also fully there with him and ready for transport.

“Remember to breathe.” Mike nods and turns around, buckling himself in and then starting to drive.

The process of helping Santana recover from her episodes was full of trial and error, but Mike’s seemingly endless patience was able to persevere. It wasn’t that difficult, really, to help Santana. He really did love her. It was the seeing her in pain (or that completely vacant expression in her eyes) that was the difficult part. He and Puck, during the process of learning what works and what doesn’t, found out quickly that if they tried to transport her before she was fully back mentally, the jerking of the vehicle would cause her to freak out all over again. So they came up with the blinks. They also realized that, while Puck was able to calm Santana down in all other aspects of their lives, he wasn’t able to calm himself down enough to not feed into her frantic energy. Mike always appeared calm, even when furious or worried, and that was the extra factor in helping his little sister. 

Mike turns on the radio, keeping it at a low volume; the music always seems to aid in Santana’s recovery. The oldies station was tuned in and before Mike knows it, he’s singing along to The Ronettes _Be My Baby_. It’s a natural reaction for him, so used to singing on his own while driving his car that he isn’t even aware that he’s doing it. Santana’s soft laughter tinkling in his ears draws attention to his singing.

“What?” He asks, looking at her in the rear view mirror.

“Di- did you ca-ry wa- wa-ter-mel-on?” Santana usually has enough problems speaking properly for some time after one of her attacks, but the laughter that Mike had drawn out of her makes it even more difficult to get her words out.

“Please, I’m totally Johnny.”

“Re-ally?”

“Gosling’s not the only good looking dude who can do the lift.” Mike winks at her in the mirror, 

“You-ll ha-ve to sh-show me.”

“Anytime ‘Tana, I won’t take it personally when you suddenly fall in love with me because of it, though.” Mike smiles as he hears Santana’s laughter again. “We’re almost there. I’m driving like a turtle to avoid bumps, you doin’ good back there?”

“’es.”

“Puck said that was his last race. I hope, for our sakes, The Twelve agree and will just let him go. It’ll help that you were there and freaked out.” Mike pauses from Santana’s indigent noise from the back seat, “Oh, shut it. You know I’m not making fun of you or light of the situation ‘Tana. I’m just saying that it’ll make it easier for Puck if he can use you as an excuse.”

“Ta-ke caaare of.”

“Yeah, if he’s smart enough – which, this is Puck so I’ll probably have to sell it – saying that we’re tired of traumatizing you over and over again.” Mike looks back at her scowling face, “Yes, I know it’s your decision if you come or not.” Mike puts the car in park and before he gets out of the car he says, “Your stubborn ass will always show up if Puck and I are there.”

“Ass.” Santana sticks her tongue out at Mike as soon as he opens the door to help her out.

“I could just leave you in the car, you know.” Mike smiles at the complete silence in response to his comment. He’d never do that to her and she knows it, but it never hurts to playfully threaten her with it. “Neither one of us actually wants to be in the gang anymore, so if there’s any excuse we can use to get us out with the least amount of damage, I say we use it. Even if it makes you look like a wimp, by your standards.”

Mike unbuckles the seat belts and waits to see if Santana can move them herself. Her arms are really shaky, but she’s able to get the strap from around her torso. Mike gets the strap holding her legs in, like he always does, and nods. 

“Getting better and stronger every time ‘Tana, I could barely see the shaking that time.” He smiles at her and moves some hair out of her face and kisses her forehead, “And you’re not a wimp. In fact, I think you’re stronger than all of us.”

Mike scoops her up in his arms, ignoring the tears in her eyes, and maneuvers her out of the back seat of his car. It’s so much easier when they use Puck’s classic Bronco, with the complete lack of roof or doors, but they’ve worked with worse – a Volkswagen Bug. When it comes to Santana, they can make anything work.

“Art’s a really cool guy,” Mike feels Santana’s grip around his neck tighten as he reaches the door to her place. He takes the keys out of his pocket with his free hand then unlocks and opens the door. “The musical direction he wants me to go in for his film is kind of killer.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s like he wants to make an action movie music video or something, where he uses the music to tell the story instead of dialogue.” Mike lays Santana down on her bed and starts taking off her shoes, “I think there’s only twenty lines of dialogue in the entire script.”

“An ac-tion musi-cal?’ Santana shakily unbuttons the last button on her plaid button down and starts attempting to pull her arms out of the sleeves.

“That’d be amazing. Could you imagine Brittany singing while surfing?” Mike turns to look at Santana in laughter, but shakes his head at her dazed look instead. “Get your head out of the gutter or I’m not cuddling with you tonight.”

“What?” Santana escapes her shirt and feigns a look of innocence.

“Santana, you’re about as subtle as a grizzly bear in a Victoria’s Secret.” Mike laughs, “You should go for it.”

“Jus’ let me get the use of m-my legs back firs’.”

“You got it.” Mike climbs into the bed behind her, securely wrapping Santana in his arms, “But the movie is less musical and more like one of those surf films you’re always watching. Except less surf, more action.”

“I’ll pretend that makes sense.”

“Okay.” Mike laughs.

“Night Mikey, thanks.”

“Anytime ‘Tana, sleep peacefully.” Mike kisses her temple and holds her until she falls asleep.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s not that Santana particularly likes biking to the grocery store; she doesn’t even do it to save the environment or anything. She just, well, she never learned how to drive a car. Her parent’s accident happened just before she was to get her driver’s permit and the last thing she wanted to do at the time was get in a car, let alone drive one. Puck had his motorcycle anyway. If she ever needed to get somewhere she could just hitch a ride on the back of his bike. When she stopped riding motorcycles, it sort of left her in a bind.

The four mile round trip is fairly easy now, she’s gotten used to figuring the right amount that she can carry and ride her bike safely. Santana even bought one of those detachable baskets for her BMX (she refuses to get a beach cruiser out of principle alone). She no longer cares how it makes her look with bags hanging all over her and her bike. It just, sometimes, she wishes that things were just a bit easier for her. Every once in a while she’ll sit on the motorcycle in her garage, the one that isn’t quite fully rebuilt yet, and she’ll start the engine. She just sits on the bike and rev’s it, just trying to get herself used to it. Santana’s figured that she needs to work on no longer being scared of riding a ‘cycle. If she’s no longer scared of being in cars, then she shouldn’t be scared of motorcycles either. Maybe, by the time she finally rebuilds the Triumph, she’ll be able to ride again.

It’s not like riding a BMX bike everywhere is any safer. It’s what Santana can do though, so she does it to survive. Normally, Santana keeps her grocery list in the kitchen of LoCoRo. She spends most of her time there anyway, and Schue will take her list and pick things up for her. She’d forgotten to make a list with everything that had been going on lately, though, and had to do the trek for herself. 

“Santana!”

Santana raises her black wayfarers off her eyes, scrunches her brow and looks to her right to see who the hell would be calling her name. She sees Brittany, who is standing and waving next to a haphazardly parked bright yellow Xterra. Of course Brittany would drive sunshine.

“Hi.” Brittany smiles as Santana coasts to a stop in front of her.

“Hey Brittany.” Santana removes her helmet and brushes out her hair with her fingers.

“I saw you riding and I thought ‘wow, that person’s really weighed down by those bags’ and then I saw it was you, so I had to pull over.”

“I do this all the time Britt.”

“So? You’re getting in.” Brittany takes the bags out of Santana’s basket, “I’m giving you a ride back.”

“You don’t need to do that, really.”

“I want to, so don’t make me force you, okay?” Brittany bites her lip and stares Santana in the eye, “I’ll give you some candy, little girl.”

“Ay Dios mio.” Santana mumbles as she gets up off her bike.

“Yay!” Brittany puts the bags on the floor of the backseat, lowers the seats so they lie flat and then moves to the back of her truck. She opens it up and Santana lifts her bike in, easily laying it down. Brittany closes the back door.

“Thanks.” Santana lifts the bottom of her faded black Tupac t-shirt and wipes off the sweat on her brow. She finishes and looks up to find Brittany staring at her stomach. “What?”

“Your abs are phenomenal.”

“Okay.”

“Can I touch them?”

“What?” Santana definitely did not just squeak. She just had the sudden urge to talk in a higher octave, that’s all.

“Are they photoshopped? Is that why you don’t want me to touch them?” Brittany looks at Santana like she would understand if they were. Santana’s too perplexed by the serious question to notice Brittany stepping forward and reaching out with her hand. She definitely notices the soft fingers slipping up underneath her shirt. Santana takes a sudden step backwards, her back running into the tailgate of the truck

“I mean, okay, just slip your hand under my shirt like it’s nothing.” Santana widens her eyes and starts laughing. 

“Thanks.” Brittany’s softly stroking Santana’s abdomen and holding Santana’s eyes in her penetrating gaze, “You lied, these aren’t photoshopped at all.”

“Tech-“ Santana coughs, trying to return her voice to normal talking levels, “Technically, I never said they were.”

“I wouldn’t be able to wash my clothes on them, either.” Brittany pouts.

“Sorry that my stomach disappoints you.” Santana unconsciously tightens her stomach muscles as Brittany’s fingers languidly descend.

“They’re perfect.” Brittany licks and bites her lip.

“Yeah?” Santana mimics Brittany’s mouth. “For what?”

“Oh, many things.” Brittany takes another step forward, pinning Santana against the truck. She runs a finger around Santana’s belly button and slips her finger into the crevice there.

“Like?” Santana inhales sharply and attempts to will her goosebumps away.

“Dessert.” Brittany whispers just before she leans in and kisses Santana. Her lips are soft and the kiss is both cautious and confident. 

Santana returns the kiss. She might’ve been caught off guard, but that doesn’t mean that she’s going to idly stand by. When she feels Brittany pull away, she shakes her head and leans herself into Brittany’s embrace, continuing the kiss. It’s languid in nature, both girls seemingly content in just learning the other’s lips. Santana wraps her arms around Brittany’s neck and Brittany slides her hand to Santana’s back, pulling them closer while pushing them against her truck. Santana nips at Brittany’s bottom lip as she pulls away from the kiss. She then hides her face, placing her forehead where Brittany’s shoulder meets the neck. Santana can feel Brittany’s smile against her ear. 

She’s not really sure how she’s feeling. It’s been years since Santana’s kissed someone. Well, kissed someone like that. She kisses Mike and Puck, sometimes even Quinn, on the mouth all the time, but those are always out of platonic appreciation. Breif pecks of comfort or gratitude. This definitely wasn’t that. Brittany’s kiss had made her feel all warm and gooey on the inside, which is a first. She’s feeling self-conscious right now, actually. Brittany just standing there, holding Santana and nuzzling her ear, not saying anything or trying anything else is comforting. Santana might be able to get used to how she feels right now. That is, if she can remember how to breathe.

“Yep, delicious.” Brittany whispers. Santana’s body shivers from both Brittany’s words and the feel of warm breath on her neck.

“Yeah.” Santana pulls her head back, but doesn’t break the embrace, “Wait, what?”

“I’m glad I saw you riding your BMX.” Brittany smiles, the sun hitting her eyes making them twinkle and reminding Santana of summer skies. 

“I think I am too.” Santana smiles shyly and nods her head. This feeling is new, but she finds that she’s not scared by it. The warmth that has filled her body is comforting and exhilarating. It’s a much better high than racing ever gave her.

A horn honks in the distance, causing both girls to give a startled jump. Reminded that they’re in the middle of a parking lot, they give each other sheepish grins and laugh softly.

“I guess I should take you home now?” Brittany slides her hand out of Santana’s shirt and catches Santana’s hand, tugging on it in the direction she was heading. Santana intertwines their fingers and follows.

“Where were you originally headed anyway?”

“I was actually on my way to hopefully kidnap you.”

“What? Really?” 

“I wanted to thank you for the lessons and the wetsuit and surfboard.” Brittany opens the passenger side door for Santana to get in.

“Oh, well, it’s nothing.”

“I went by the hotel’s surf instruction kiosk to see what it would’ve been like if I didn’t have you or Quinn.” Brittany climbs into the truck and starts driving. “They wanted, like, a hundred and fifty bucks for an hour lesson with this crusty looking dude. I’m sure he’s nice and all, but he’s not you.”

“Yes, definitely not a dude.”

“Curves in all the right places.” Brittany nods, “You’re hot and were so adorable that first morning and instead of charging me or telling me to, like, go away, you just gave me some really delicious coffee and one of the most delicious muffins I’ve ever had.” 

Santana thinks of a completely different kind of muffin she wouldn’t mind serving up to Brittany, but she wasn’t quite ready to verbalize those thoughts. Not yet, at least. Santana wants to go slow with this one, do things right, if Brittany will have her.

“I had to woo you away from the evil mermaid.” Santana fiddles with her silver thumb ring. 

“Trust me.” Brittany reaches over, grabs Santana’s hand and intertwines their fingers, “You didn’t need the coffee for that, but it’s definitely a bonus. Besides, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. When Zoe hooked me up with an opportunity I was out that door faster than my apron could hit the counter.”

“Zoe?” Santana hopes her palms aren’t sweating. Just because it’s never happened before doesn’t mean it won’t and Brittany’s got her all sorts of confused.

“She’s the one who got me on that Tarantino film where I broke my leg.”

“Quinn mentioned that. Was it a Kill Bill?” 

“No, it was the other one.” Brittany winks and pulls the truck over to park next to LoCoRo.

“Wait, that Zoe?” Santana turns to Brittany with her eyebrows raised.

“Yes?” Brittany turns the car off, unbuckles her seatbelt and turns to Santana. “I was late for my shift, right? So I was going super fast on my bicycle to get there. The streets in West Hollywood are, like, super tiny and super busy. At least, the ones where my store was, it was always super crazy there.”

“Yeah, I try to avoid WeHo at all costs.” Santana chuckles, she had a couple close calls when she was still racing. 

“There was this alley just before the store and this guy in a Beamer comes driving out of it. I was heading into a t-bone with his car at a breakneck speed ‘cause I was on the sidewalk, right?” Brittany lets go of Santana’s hand and starts gesticulating with both of hers. “So, I was like ‘fuck it, if I’m going to crash, I’m going to crash in style’, but I was hoping I could clear the car entirely. I back flipped over that car, landed it and almost face planted into Zoe; who was sitting at one of the patio tables drinking a coffee.”

“No way.” Santana shakes her head.

“Don’t hold it against her, not everyone can drive to Huntington Beach on a break, San.”

“I meant the back flip over the car, Britt.” Santana smiles, Brittany seemingly always came to the most interesting conclusions.

“Oh, yeah, totally, it was nothing.” Brittany shrugs, “I mean, a little bit more difficult without a ramp, but I’ve done more difficult things, like tying my shoes.”

Santana shakes her head and takes hold of Brittany’s hand.

“Anyway, Zoe saw it. Well, obviously she saw it; I almost became her lap candy. She asked me if I wanted to do stuff like that as a job and the next thing I know I was in Tibet on a film set.”

“Tibet.”

“The monks were so cute.”

“Of course the monks were cute.” Santana lifts Brittany’s hand and kisses it, “You’re cute.”

“You’re adorable.” Brittany grins. They sit there smiling at each other in comfortable silence.

“You had planned on kidnapping me?”

“I was hoping you’d come with me to my home in Lake Arrowhead, but then on the drive over I kinda realized that I should give you warning so you can make work plans and stuff.”

“Yeah, there’s no way I could take off for a couple days without notice right now. I can’t do that stuff to Schue anymore.” Santana’s smile becomes rueful.

“Anymore?” 

“I had a couple years of being flaky and selfish, I guess you could say.” Santana shrugs.

“You’re anything but selfish.”

“Thanks, I’ve got a lot of time to make up for.” Santana unconsciously rubs the jagged scar on her left upper arm. She shakes her head and looks Brittany in the eye, “I notice you had your board on your roof rack. I might not be able to head off to some faraway place with you right now, but do you want another session? You’ve been catching on really quick with all of our lessons.”

“Totally!” Brittany gives a bounce and claps her hands. “I’ve been practicing.” 

“Awesome.”

-x-

 _Cumbia De Los Muertos_ by Ozomatli is blasting from the speakers as Santana dances around her garage looking for the right bit for her socket wrench. She gives an extra shake of her hips as she finds it. Her light wash denim jeans are baggy and covered in grease and holes, and she has to pull them up so they don’t fall off her ass due to the dancing. Santana squats down and tightens the bolts on the primary chain cover. She stands up and wipes the sweat off her brow with her forearm and looks down at her nearly completely rebuilt bike. 

She built (a term she uses loosely) her first bike with her dad when she was seven. It basically consisted of her sitting between the toolbox and her Papi and handing him the tools he asked for. They were in that garage every Saturday, no matter what, rebuilding bikes. When they were in between motorcycles, they would shape surfboards. Her Papi instilled a philosophy in Santana. If she truly cared about something, she needed to know about the origins and how it came to be. Santana never really cared too much, at the time she was just excited to be able to do big girl things with her Papi. 

Ma was always yelling at Papi about letting Santana use the sander on the surfboards or using the impact screwdriver on stripped screws, saying it was too dangerous for a little girl. Papi would just nod and say yes dear then turn around and wink at Santana before handing her a tool. She always felt like she was special in that garage with her Papi.

It took her a couple years to finally return to that garage after her parent’s death. Santana was too scared of the memories at the time, but as soon as she took that first step inside the garage she felt engulfed in love. It was as if the garage had managed to physically hold onto the love and memories of those special moments with her Papi and had been just waiting to welcome her back in its comforting embrace. The pain was still there, but the scent of surf wax mixed with engine grease just reminded her of all those Saturdays with her dad. All of the love, laughter and singing that happened as they built things together, was still there in that garage for her. So, she picked up where her Papi left off – on the bike they’d been in the middle of. 

At one point, Santana found herself talking to the bike as if it were her Papi. She’d update it on her life, the trouble Puck had gotten into that week and how she and Mikey had to get him out of it. It helped her be able to breathe easier and when she finally finished that bike she decided she needed to build a special one, one for herself in honor of her parents. 

“Tana?” Puck’s muffled voice calls out, followed by a knock.

“It’s cool.” Santana pulls the red rag out of the back pocket of her jeans and wipes her hands on it. She then walks over to the stereo and lowers the volume.

“I brought cervezas.” Puck holds up a six-pack of _Imperial_ as he walks over to the workbench.

“Uh oh.”

“What do you mean ‘uh oh’? Since when is beer a bad thing?” Puck pulls out a bottle and opens it, handing it to Santana.

“Since the only time you ever bring cervezas into the garage is when you’re in some sort of trouble.” Santana takes the beer and takes a long pull from the bottle; she hadn’t realized how thirsty she’d become. “Thanks.”

“Whatever,” Puck opens his own bottle. “I bring you beer all the time.”

“Yeah, but not on Saturdays.” She laughs and leans against the bench. 

“I don’t want to mess with your special time.”

“You make it sound like a thing.”

“It _is_ a thing.” Puck looks at her pointedly.

“It’s not a thing.”

“It’s totally a thing, ‘Tana.” He takes a pull from his bottle before continuing, “I’m glad you have it.”

“Okay, fine. It’s a thing, whatever.” Santana rolls her eyes, “The point was you only come when something’s up.”

“Because it’s special and I get that.”

“Puck, if you don’t – don’t make me go all Ma Lopez to get it out of you.” Santana points her bottle threateningly at Puck. Out of the many things she gained from her mother, beauty being at the forefront, being the disciplinarian was the one Santana was most surprised to find. It really helped to keep Puck’s ass in line, though.

“Fuck. Can’t a guy bring his sis a beer?” Puck fiddles with the label on his bottle.

“Yes, he can, if he’s Mikey Chang.” Santana laughs. She throws her empty bottle into the recycling canister on the wall and walks back to her bike.

“Don’t be so smug, you’ve got grease on your face.”

“Don’t be such a whiny little bitch,” Santana uses the bottom of her Jack Daniel’s tank top to wipe her face. “Man up.”

“I’m dating Quinn.” Puck sighs.

“Duh.” Santana rolls her eyes and starts aligning the front forks on the bike. “Please don’t tell me that’s what you were freaking out about.”

“You’re an ass.”

“But a cute one.” Santana looks at Puck over the handlebars and blows him a kiss.

“She’s kinda intense, ‘Tana.”

“Bring me another beer, please?” Santana holds up a hand, her other hand is still holding the wrench that loosened the fork clamp bolts. She smiles up at him when she feels the cold wet bottle make contact with her palm. “You like intense.”

“Yeah, but this is different.”

“Okay.” Santana fiddles with the front tire, getting it aligned.

“I think she’s, like, serious about us.”

“Puckles,” Santana laughs and looks him in the eye. “How long have you two actually been dating?”

“Awhile, I guess,” Puck shrugs.

“You guess?”

“Well, it’s a little bit confusing ‘cause we were trying to wait until you were done with physical therapy, to be all professional n’ shit.” Puck scratches his head, “But, I dunno. You didn’t need me to help you at her clinic anymore and I kinda missed seeing her face all the time, so…”

“A while,” Santana nods. “Y’all are idiots.”

“Fuck you.” Puck laughs.

“It’d only be unprofessional if she and I started dating, you spaz.”

“Well, there were other things to think about too, ‘Tana.” Puck shrugs. Santana nods, she actually does understand what he’s getting at. She had a lot to deal with at the time and she’s actually thankful that she didn’t have to deal with something else, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to give him shit about it.

“So you’ve been dating for years on the downlow – which, y’all suck at subtle, by the way.” Santana tightens the bolts on the fork and stands up. 

“Yeah, years…wow.” Puck scrunches his brow, “It doesn’t feel that long. Maybe ‘cause of the whole keeping it secret thing?”

“Or because you like her, you idiot.”

“I’ve liked girls before; never felt like time went flying by.”

“Q’s not other girls, man.” Santana drops her wrench on the bench and smacks him in the back of the head, “You’ve never actually dated anyone longer than two weeks.”

“What about –“

“Please, what you and I were doing was not dating.” Santana sits on the empty stool in front of the workbench. She leans back against it, her elbows resting on the worktop.

“True, but time did fly by.”

“Not the same.”

“No.” Puck shakes his head, “Not the same.”

“You’re just as serious as she is, man.” Santana brings her hand to the middle of Puck’s shoulders and rests it there, “Maybe even more so, since you’ve never actually had a properly functioning relationship before.”

“Whatever, if it works, then it’s functioning.” Puck looks back at Santana, not letting her downplay their connection.

“So what’s the issue here, Puck?”

“I’m scared ‘Tana.” Puck hangs his head.

“There we go,” Santana rubs her hand in soothing motions on his back.

“Shaddup.”

“I’m sorry,” She leans forward and places a kiss on his temple. “Tell ‘Tana what’s wrong.”

“I don’t want to fuck it up.”

“So don’t,” Santana shrugs.

“You say it like it’s a choice.”

“Isn’t it?” Santana gets up and stands in front of him. She rests her hands on Puck’s jaw and lifts his head to look at her, “Life’s full of choices. Every situation you’re in is one in which you will make a decision that will affect you or you and Quinn.”

“What if I make the wrong decision?”

“You won’t, not if you’re listening to your heart.”

“When did you turn into a sap?”

“Whatever, as long as you don’t fuck up too badly, I’m pretty sure Quinn will forgive you after we kick your ass.” Santana winks, “But you need to decide how serious you are, first.”

“Yeah, I know.” Puck lifts his head and gives Santana a brief kiss on the lips, “Thanks ‘Tana.”

“Quinn’s important to me, Puck. Don’t fuck with her.”

“I know, I know. She’s important to me too.” Puck stands up and heads for the door.

“She better be.” Santana waves at him, “Thanks for the cervezas.”

“See ya at the bonfire?”

“For sure, if I don’t see you before then.” Santana nods.

“You invited Britt, right?” Puck smirks.

“Shut up.” Santana doesn’t even try to fight the smile that erupts on her face.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Goodbye, Puckerman.”

“Love ya.” Puck winks.

“Love you too, ass.”

-x-

The bonfire pits were about a mile down the beach and Santana usually rode with Puck in his truck to help him unload. She always gets a kick out of being in a truck with no roof and was constantly teasing him about not being able to afford a car with one, but she loves his 1970s truck. Today though, she passed on the ride. It was a nice day out and she decided that she and Brittany should skate over on their skateboards. Santana carried Brittany’s longboard, with their wetsuits, sweatshirts and towels hanging off of it, while they coasted down the beach. Brittany made it difficult for Santana to keep her balance with all the laughing she’d done at Brittany’s behind the scenes stories from one of her films. Her arms and stomach were tired by the time they reached the bonfire pit where Quinn was setting up.

“Quinnie!” Brittany squeals and practically pounces on her friend.

“Hey Britt.” Quinn hugs Brittany.

“Hey Doc, I see you’ve met my friend Brittany.” Santana drops her skateboard deck down on the sand then sticks the longboard into the sand, pointing skyward.

“Friend?” Brittany walks back to Santana and pulls on the drawstring of Santana’s magenta and cyan colored men’s style boardshorts. She pouts and bites her lip, “I was hoping you thought of me as more than a friend.”

“I mean,” Santana licked her lips and wishes that she’d been wearing something other than her white bikini as a top. Something that would help her hide the goosebumps and the flexing of her abs that resulted from Brittany playing with her shorts. “I, uh, was joking B. Quinn already knows you.”

Brittany doesn’t say anything. She stands there staring at Santana, still idly playing with the drawstring. Santana knows she’s blushing and everyone can see it, but with Brittany staring at her like that, she finds that she doesn’t really care. Let her friends make fun of her; Brittany wants to be hers and wants their friends to know. Her skin feels like it’s on fire from the inside out and as soon as she can remember how to talk she’ll say something. 

“Can you stop staring at me like that? I can’t think right now,” Santana’s never felt more betrayed by her brain. Except, she doesn’t really care, Brittany’s got the cutest little grin on her face right now and Santana’s almost willing to never have use of her brain again if it’ll result in more of those grins. “God, just kiss me already if you want me to be your girl.”

Brittany giggles and shakes her head; she leans forward until there’s barely any space between their lips and pauses to smirk. Santana rolls her eyes and closes the distance, pressing their lips together in a soft, short and sweet kiss. Brittany pulls back and winks at Santana, who lets out a sharp bark of laughter. Brittany drops her hand from the drawstring to Santana’s hand, intertwining their fingers, and turns around. Quinn is staring at them like they’re a pair of puppies or something. Puck’s behind her with this look on his face. Santana can’t really tell what the expression means, she’s never really seen it before, but she knows that the smirk means she’ll be teased about this.

“Those must’ve been some surf lessons.” Quinn smirks.

“Shaddup, Q.” Santana rolls her eyes, but bumps her shoulder against Brittany’s. “I’m not thanking you.”

“You’re not welcome.”

“You two talk weird.” Brittany cuts in.

Santana starts to clarify things for Brittany when she finds herself crashing back first into the sand, with a slobbering ball of fur on top of her. It’s the most adorable yellow lab she’s ever seen and she doesn’t get to see her nearly enough.

“Hey Pika.” Santana grins and wrestles with the dog.

“Sorry ‘Tana, I was telling Puck something and the next thing I knew she was running.” Mike picks up the leash that’s lying in the sand. “Silly dog, at least wait till I take your leash off.”

“Its fine Mikey, I like when cute blondes pounce me.” Santana winks. 

“I’ll remember that.” Brittany sits down on the sand next to Santana and starts wrestling with the dog too.

“Mikey, this is Brittany, my…,” Santana pauses and looks at Brittany and smiles, “my girlfriend. Britt, this is Mike Chang. He and Puck are my big brothers.”

“We met that one time, with Art, remember?” Mike takes his shirt off and starts applying some sunscreen.

“I wasn’t her girl then.” Santana winks.

“Well, that does change things, hello Brittany.” Mike tips his straw fedora, “Santana better take good care of you.”

“Hey!” Santana smacks Mike on the arm and laughs. 

“That adorable ball of fur is Pikachu, by the way.” Mike grins.

“I choose you, Pikachu!” Brittany yells into the puppy’s face. Pikachu jumps and barks. Santana’s brain stops working again.

“Wow, ‘Tana.” Mikey offers his sunscreen to her. Santana starts applying it as Mike whispers, “She’s definitely a keeper.”

“Right? I didn’t even know she’s a secret geek.” Santana looks down at the adorable, hyperactive, blondes that are playfully wrestling. She can’t tell if the puppy or the human is winning, but she’s cheering for Brittany and wishing she had a camera.

“Bonus.” Mike raises his fist in salute. Santana laughs and bumps it with her own fist.

“Totally whipped.” Puck whispers in Santana’s ear.

“Since when is being whipped ever a bad thing?”

“Good point.” Puck nods and gets slapped in the arm by Quinn, “What? Come on babe, you know it’s true.”

“Only if I’m doing the whipping, Noah.” Quinn rolls her eyes.

“Busting out the first name? Damn.” Santana teases Puck who is trying to ignore Quinn by digging through the ice chest for a beer.

“We’re totally fucked.” Puck laughs.

“Yup.” Santana grins.

Puck hands Santana a beer and holds up his hand for a high five. 

“You’re such a dork.” Santana snorts, but slaps her palm against his.

“Go save your girl from the puppy and give her a drink,” Puck hands Santana another bottle and winks.

“Such a difficult task, but I’m sure I can handle it.”

-x-

Santana walks over to Quinn who’s sitting underneath the parasol to get a break from the sun. Brittany and Mike are currently playing paddleball in the shallow water, while Puck’s tossing a Frisbee for Pikachu.

“Sometimes I’m not sure what tires me out more, sitting in the sun or swimming to cool off.” Santana runs her fingers through her wet hair in an attempt to prevent it from getting too crazy when it dried.

“You know, if you overwork your arm and have to go back to physical therapy because of your ‘free from therapy’ party…”

“Shut it, Q. You know I’m good.” Santana laughs.

“I’m just saying, I finally got rid of your ass.”

“Please, I lit up your week.” Santana sits down next to Quinn, making sure to be in the shade of the parasol. She doesn’t want to get too dark.

“Okay, sure, S.”

“I’m the best thing to happen to your life.” Santana bumps her shoulder into Quinn’s. 

“Maybe.” Quinn shakes her head. Santana looks at Quinn, who is watching something. She follows the direction Quinn’s head is turned in and sees Puck trying to wrestle the Frisbee away from Pika.

“Aw, shit. I take no responsibility for Puckerman.” Santana laughs.

“I take full responsibility for Brittany.” Quinn winks at Santana before looking back to Puck.

“Yeah, well,” Santana scratches her head.

“Do you think Puck would love me more if I cut my hair?” Quinn looks down at her long blonde strands, twirling some of them with her fingers.

“The fuck?”

“He’s been kind of distant lately, perhaps if I changed—“ 

“Stop right there.” Santana interrupts, and waits for Quinn to meet her eyes, “I’m going to let this moment pass and chalk it up to you having sunstroke, Quinn.”

“But—“

“No. You know you’re perfect exactly the way you are. If Puck doesn’t think so, then he doesn’t deserve you.” Santana looks at Puck for a moment then turns back to Quinn, “But he does.”

“It just seems like he’s been pulling away.” Quinn rests her head on Santana’s shoulder.

“Listen, there’s a bro code, so I can’t say too much, but just give him time.” Santana brings her hand up and lays her hand on Quinn’s head, “We’ve got a lot of shit to work with, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Cutting your hair though, really, Quinn?” Santana laughs.

“Whatever.” Quinn rolls her eyes, “I’ve had it like this since I can remember, it’d take something really dramatic for me to cut it.”

“When did you turn into the drama queen in this group?”

“A girl is allowed a moment of mental ineptitude, Santana.” Quinn pushes Santana’s shoulder, almost knocking her over.

“Whatever. Not over Puckerman, of all people.” Santana laughs and softly pushes Quinn back.

-x-

“I can’t believe that Quinn and Brittany beat us.” Santana shakes her head as she throws the football at Puck.

“Seriously, we’ve had a lifetime of playing together.”

“Experience clearly means jack shit.” Santana scowls, catching Puck’s pass.

“They were cheating.”

“Totally.”

“How were we supposed to concentrate when they were being so, so…” Puck’s train of thought gets derailed and the football collides with his face.

“Dude, stop thinking of Quinn’s flexibility.” Santana shakes her head and walks over to Puck, “That’s what lost us the game, man.”

“Britt’s pretty distracting too,” Puck bumps Santana’s shoulder with the football.

“Hey stop picturing my girl naked!” 

“Oh, dude, don’t _say_ it!” Puck groans, “That’s, like, instantly putting the thought in there. You know how my brain’s wired.”

“Dude,” Santana smacks the back of his head. “Not cool, bro.”

“Seriously though, where do those legs end?” Puck gazes out to the ocean and rubs his head where Santana smacked him.

“I imagine the backs of my knees if they were on my shoulders.” Santana smirks. She smacks him on the head again; she could practically read what he was currently picturing on his face.

“That can be arranged.” Brittany’s voice coming from right behind them makes Santana and Puck jump.

“Shit.” Santana mutters as she turns around, “Hey Britt.”

“Puck, Mikey needs you for something.” Brittany speaks, never taking her eyes off of Santana.

“Good luck ‘Tana,” Puck whispers and Santana swears she’s never seen him run away that fast before.

“San?” Brittany licks her lips; Santana follows the action with her eyes.

“Uh, yeah, B?”

“You’re all sweaty.” Brittany moves her hand down to the string on her purple bikini bottoms. Santana gets distracted by the movement and watches the hand fiddle with the bow.

“Just finished playing football, Britt.” Santana licks her lips and looks back up at Brittany who is now standing less than a foot away from her.

“I know, we beat you.” Brittany brings her hand to Santana’s stomach and starts tracing the slight crevices that were between the clearly defined abdominal muscles.

“I mean, I think you cheated.” Santana’s breath hitches as Brittany slowly traces her fingers higher, “But I’m totally fine with that.”

“Cheating?” Brittany blinks.

“Losing to you.” Santana moves her hands to Brittany’s hips, something to keep her anchored in reality.

“Santana? You’re sweating.” 

“Yeah, you said that already, Britt.” Santana uses her thumbs to softly caress Brittany’s hips.

“You’re sweating like an ice cold beer in the middle of summer, and I just want to drink you up.” Brittany takes a step closer, bringing their torsos together.

“Dios mio.” Santana whispers. She wants to look into Brittany’s eyes, but hers won’t leave Brittany’s lips. Santana’s not really sure how she’s still standing, she swears her legs have turned into jello and it’s become extremely difficult for her to breathe.

“I’m going to kiss you now and then we’re going to jump into the ocean and cool off so that I don’t jump you.” Brittany nods.

“Wouldn’t want th-“ Santana’s cut off by Brittany’s mouth covering hers. She’s pretty sure she’ll never get used to the feeling that erupts in her body when Brittany kisses her, but Santana’s willing to spend the rest of her life finding out. Santana feels Brittany’s tongue seeking entrance to her mouth and pulls back from the kiss, resting her forehead on Brittany’s, “Ocean, now. I’m not giving Puckerman a free show.”

Brittany laughs as she pulls Santana by the hand into the cold water.

-x-

The sun just set on the ocean, but it’ll be a while before the reason they were actually at the beach that night started. They still had some time before the rangers kicked them out of their section too. Mike and Quinn are making s’mores, using the bonfire to roast the marshmallows. Brittany’s curled up in a ball on the sand holding a sleeping Pika.

“I don’t remember the last time I had such a good day.” Santana hands Puck his acoustic guitar and sits down next to him.

“Yeah, the buzz from an adrenaline high just isn’t the same.” Puck nods. He tunes his guitar, softly testing the tightness of the strings.

“No way it was before everything.”

“A full day of nothing but pure positive vibes?” Puck looks at her and shakes his head, “It has to be.”

“Shit.”

“You said it, sis.” Puck plays the opening riff to Sublime’s _Caress Me Down_ and Santana smacks him in the arm.

“Really, Puck?” Quinn laughs.

“Just playin’ ladies, how about this?” He starts playing again, an entirely different type of song, “Saying I love you is not the words I want to hear from you…”

Santana joins in on the accompanying vocals, years of singing this song with her Papi and then Puck made the singing automatic. It’s one of Santana’s favorite songs. She forces herself to concentrate on the crackling flames of the bonfire in front of her. Anything to keep her from looking over at Brittany, she wasn’t ready for that yet. The lyrics were a little too raw for Santana right now, and if she looked over at Brittany she knew that she’d be an open book. Brittany was already able to pry so many things out of Santana, things Santana wasn’t even aware she wanted or needed. Santana just wanted a little bit longer to get used to this feeling she feels when thinking of Brittany and love at the same time. It’s not as frightening as she thought, but she’s still scared.

The song ends, and Santana can’t help herself. She moves her eyes over to where she knows Brittany is laying. Brittany’s sitting up now and staring at Santana with a gaze that feels like it goes right through her. Santana feels completely exposed, but she can’t look away. She’s been captivated by Brittany from the beginning and maybe one day she’ll be able to resist that gaze, but not yet. Not when it’s all so new to her.

Puck accidentally bumps into her as he stands.

“Sorry,” He squeezes her shoulder and she can breathe again. Puck gives her a soft smile and a wink before handing his guitar to Quinn. 

Mike leans over and hands Santana the s’more he just made. Santana’s never been able to make a proper s’more for herself, for some reason the combination of Santana, fire and marshmallows always results in something getting burnt. Usually it was both Santana and the marshmallow. She hears Quinn start singing _Song for a Friend_ as she takes a bite out of the chocolatey marshmallowy graham cracker goodness. Mike made the best s’mores. Somehow they just didn’t taste as good when Puck made them for her. Santana just doesn’t understand how easy it is for such a simple dessert to have so many ways to go wrong.

Santana startles out of her inner s’more musings when she feels a pair of arms encircle her from behind. She notices that Brittany has basically made her the baby spoon in this sitting arrangement. 

“Hey.” Brittany whispers and places her chin on Santana’s shoulder. Santana leans back and rests her own head on Brittany’s shoulder. She can feel Brittany’s heart beating kind of fast, which was good since Santana’s was doing the same.

“Hey, yourself.” Santana smiles.

”You’ve got a beautiful voice.”

“Thanks, my Ma was a singer.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Nothing, like, really huge or anything. She just liked to sing in coffee shops and stuff.” Santana shrugs, “People knew her ‘round here, you know, but not famous.”

“Sounds like the right people knew her, if she got to keep doing it.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Santana reaches to her shoulder and starts playing with the strand of Brittany’s hair that had fallen there, “We would sing all the time. Didn’t matter what we were doing, we usually ended up singing.”

“That’s adorable.” Brittany starts to draw shapes on Santana’s stomach with her fingers and Santana settles further into Brittany’s embrace. She feels quite content, sitting there being held and getting to listen to Quinn play guitar while Mike sings. It was one of their hipster songs that Puck refused to play. Santana knew that Puck knows the song in its entirety, but it always gives him a good excuse to sit and look at Quinn. Brocode means never calling him on his shit when his girl is present though, and Santana’s not about to take the chance of him calling her out on the millions of things he could be with Brittany there. So she just sits and takes in this moment with her friends. 

Pretty soon they’re all softly singing random songs, all well within the campfire genre that typically get sung. Minus cumbaya ‘cause, really. Puck’s a pro at turning power ballads and a fairly decent portion of R & B hits into an acoustic form that sounds amazing. Santana can sing everything he plays; Puck always rushes right over when he’s finished a new arrangement to test it out on her. She loves it, but she mostly appreciates the look in his eyes when he’s doing it. She might have to rearrange things in the shop, set up a stage for an open mic night, subtlety encourage Puck to further his craft.

Santana’s slow dancing with Brittany as Mike sings _Runnin’_ by The Pharcyde when she first notices it, a subtle glow happening from the crashing of the waves just off shore. 

“Puck, it’s time.” Santana nods towards the ocean with her head as she stops dancing, “I think Britt and I will walk back, can you take our stuff?”

“Time for what?” Brittany asks.

“A surprise.” Santana winks.

“Sure thing ‘Tana.” Puck steps back from his dance with Quinn and starts packing up. They get his truck loaded up with everything except for Santana’s long board and two wetsuits. 

“Put your suit on here so Puck can take our clothes back for us, k?” Santana hands Brittany her wetsuit.

“We’re going surfing?”

“Yup.” Santana holds a towel up, protecting Brittany’s modesty. She’s pretty sure Brittany would change out in the open with no problems, but Santana needs to protect her eyes from the feast available or they’d never get out in that water tonight.

“Now?”

“Is there a problem Britt?”

“You’re not going to feed me to the sharks or anything, are you?” Brittany pauses her dressing and looks Santana in the eyes.

“No Britt,” Santana leans forward, concentrating on not looking over the towel, and kisses Brittany on the nose, “Silly, I just want to show you something. You’ll like it, I promise.”

“Okay.” Brittany smiles and finishes with her suit. 

Santana and Brittany walk down the beach for a while before Santana stops. The lights are the dimmest on this portion of the beach; she’s tested it on previous nights like this. There’s a trashcan with an old school Bones Powel and Peralta sticker on the bike path that she uses as a marker. Santana put it there. The sticker was made before she was born, so she knows that no one else is going to randomly put an identical sticker on this stretch of beach and she put it in a place that’s only noticeable if you were looking for it. Santana tugs Brittany’s hand and heads towards the ocean, with their longboard in her other hand.

“Are we going to turn into Ninja Turtles?” Brittany asks as soon as they’re settled on the board after swimming out.

“What?” Santana laughs, “Why?”

“The waves are kind of glowing, San.” Brittany puts her hand into the nearly black ocean water and moves it forward; glowing tracks of bubbles follow behind her hand.

“No mutant ooze, babe.” Santana scoots closer to Brittany on the board and hugs her from behind, “It’s red tide.”

“But the water’s glowing blue.”

“During the day it makes the water kinda reddish brown, didn’t you notice?”

“It’s Southern California, San.” Brittany rolls her eyes, “The water always looks like a sewage plant exploded.”

“True,” Santana laughs. “It’s neat though, right?”

“Totally,” Brittany reaches down and hits the water surrounding them again, and makes a big glowing splash. “Who needs candles?”

“Candles?”

“Yeah,” Brittany turns around as far as the surfboard will allow and looks at Santana. “Everyone’s always going on about candles being romantic, but you gave me a glowing ocean.”

“Well, I just—“ Santana forgets what she’s about to say, Brittany’s lips are on hers and she’s pretty sure that’s more important than whatever it was. This should be awkward, the body angles are weird, but Santana barely notices. There’s just something about the way the ocean is slightly rocking them as their mouths and tongues meet that temporarily makes Santana forget where she is. She wishes the kiss could go on forever, but Brittany pulls her lips away and rests her forehead on Santana’s. When Santana opens her eyes it’s to darkness surrounding them, only the faint glow from the beach lights allows them to see each other’s outlines. Santana doesn’t need to see Brittany’s lips to kiss them, so she does again and again until she remembers why they were out there in the middle of the ocean.

“B, Babe, Britt, stop distracting me with your everything,” Santana scoots herself away from Brittany, putting enough distance between them on the board for Santana to be able to think again. Brittany lets out a soft giggle, one that sounds lower than her normal giggles. Yeah. Santana almost forgets again, “I thought we might try something tonight.”

“I thought we were trying something, San.” Brittany bites her lip and Santana forces her eyes shut.

“Don’t you want to surf on glowing waves? I mean, look at them.” Santana points to the breaking waves in front of them, illuminating in the dark like some neon blue light bombs exploding and radiating their glow throughout the water. 

“I think I’d rather go back to what we were doing.” Brittany slides herself backwards, closer to Santana.

“You don’t think this is cool at all? When I was a niña I couldn’t get enough, I stayed up all night watching the glowing waves.”

“You’re adorable.” Brittany leans over and kisses Santana on the cheek.

“I’m not adorable.”

“You are,” Brittany nods and smiles. “You honestly only brought me out here to show me some glowing water, with no ulterior motives?”

Santana scrunches her brow and nods.

“How did I find someone like you?” Brittany shakes her head and brushes her lips against Santana’s, “I love that you just wanted to share something special with me. I do. But if it’s between a midnight surf session in freezing cold glowing water, or an entirely different kind of surf session in your nice and warm bed? No competition, Santana.”

“You, what?” 

“I really want to kiss you right now, Santana. I want to kiss you without having to worry about drowning in anything other than you, okay?”

Santana leans forward, wraps her arms around Brittany and pulls her close. She moves her lips next to Brittany’s earlobe and whispers that it’s more than just okay before kissing the ear and softly nipping at the lobe with her teeth.

“Santana?”

“Yeah, Britt?”

“If you don’t stop that right now I might lose any restraint I have and risk drowning.” Brittany rolls her head closer to Santana’s lips.

“Okay, babe.” Santana gives another kiss before moving backwards on the board. “Lean forward and paddle with me. When I say up, try to stand up like you normally would on the board. We’re gonna try surfing in, it’s faster than swimming.”

-x-

“I still can’t believe that worked, that was amazing!” Brittany giggles as she takes off her wetsuit.

“Yeah, it really shouldn’t have.” Santana turns to hang her wetsuit up on the rack.

“Surfing with you, with the waves glowing all around us, there aren’t words right now.”

“I’m glad you liked it, Brittany. That’s what I wanted to show you, how cool it is.” Santana stretches a hand behind her, “Hand me your suit so I can set it to dry?”

“Here you go.”

“That’s not your –“ Santana looks down at what she’s now holding. Brittany’s bikini top, looking up at her innocently. Santana swallows and clears her throat, “suit.”

“Nope.” Brittany’s giggle is in Santana’s ear just before she feels Brittany’s naked torso make contact with her back. Santana instantly feels hot, Brittany’s skin is burning her alive and she just wants more of it, “You were taking too long.”

“Was I?” Santana turns around and wraps her arms around Brittany. Her body is thrumming with anticipation. It’s been so long, yet her body knows exactly what it wants to be doing. Judging by the feel of Brittany’s nipples, she wants this just as much.

“Yep.” Brittany’s fingers play with the string at the neck of Santana’s bikini before deftly untying them and moving to the lower connection.

“Too long for what?” Santana looks up at Brittany through her eyelashes and licks her lips.

“To kiss me.” Brittany pouts.

Santana brings her head closer to Brittany’s and moves in for a kiss, but pauses and pulls back a little. Her eyes are on Brittany’s and she’s not surprised when Brittany follows the movement of her head. Brittany’s lips search for a kiss and let out a whimper that breaks Santana’s ability to resist. At the contact of their lips, Brittany crushes their bodies together. Santana’s top falls to the floor, their breasts finally getting to make contact.

It’s Santana’s turn to whimper as Brittany drags a hand up to the nape of her neck. Brittany uses her short nails to lightly scratch the back of Santana’s head and lightly tugs on the hair there. Santana breaks her mouth away with a groan.

“Dios.” Santana whispers and brings a hand to the back of Brittany’s head and lightly pulls the lips on her neck closer. Brittany feels Santana’s quickened pulse beneath her lips as she sucks and nips at the skin there. The hand curled in Santana’s hair keeps her neck wide open for devouring. Brittany slides her other hand down and slips it between Santana’s boardshorts and her skin. She lets out a tiny growl at the lack of bikini there.

Santana pulls Brittany’s head from her neck and smashes their lips together. Her tongue demands entrance and Brittany obliges. She feels Brittany move her hands to the front of the boardshorts, untying them and easily pushing them off Santana’s slim hips. Santana moves her mouth to Brittany’s neck and bites down, trying to block a groan from escaping as she feels Brittany’s hand grip her ass. The next thing she knows is she’s being lifted. Santana moves her legs up, wrapping her legs around Brittany’s waist. She groans as her center makes contact with Brittany’s firm stomach. Little ripples of pleasure come in waves each time Brittany moves them, taking lazy and wobbly steps.

“San,” Brittany hisses the S out, trying to concentrate on the lips that are playing with the skin just below her ear as well as concentrating on not accidentally dropping Santana.

“Mmm?” Santana nips at Brittany’s earlobe.

“Fuck it.” Brittany turns and walks them over to the longboard that’s laying flat on top of a couple of workhorses and sets Santana down before bringing their lips in contact again.

The sweet fruity smell of surf wax permeates the air and combines with the faint smell of the ocean on Brittany’s skin and it goes perfectly with the lingering taste that Santana picked up from her tongues brief contact with Brittany’s neck. Brittany’s hand is still on Santana’s ass, but the other is slowly massaging Santana’s breast. Santana’s pretty sure she’s never felt this good before and she knows it’s only going to get better, especially once she remembers how to control her movements. Santana’s got a hand clawing at the small of Brittany’s back. Her other hand grips Brittany’s hair, neither tugging nor pushing just loosely keeping a grip even when Brittany’s lips make contact with her nipple.

Santana’s hips grind forward into Brittany’s stomach at the contact and a soft moan escapes her lips. She almost falls off the edge of the surfboard with her surge, but Brittany’s hand is there with a firm grip on her ass and keeping her safe. Brittany brings her mouth to Santana’s other breast and she switches the positions of her hands, giving equal attention to Santana.

“I can’t wait to taste you.” Brittany whispers before slowly dragging her mouth down Santana’s abdomen, making sure to kiss each softly defined muscle as she goes. She’s rimming Santana’s bellybutton with her tongue when she finally notices the tug on her scalp from Santana’s fingers.

“Britt, up.” Santana’s usually more eloquent than this, but this is anything but usual. Each touch of Brittany’s against her skin sends pulses throughout her entire body. She’s so ready, she doubts that she’ll be able to last much longer but she wants Brittany on her and in her.

“You sure?” Brittany’s resting her face on Santana’s stomach and looking up, her eyes wide and pupils blown so wide that there’s barely any blue left. 

“Fuck.” Santana gasps.

“Trying to.” Brittany giggles and nuzzles the skin below Santana’s naval, breathing in a scent that is entirely unique to Santana. Santana’s hips roll forward. 

“Up, babe, I want you with me.” She softly tugs at Brittany’s hair again. Brittany moves up and captures Santana’s lips with hers, bringing their torsos together again.

“Will this support us?” Brittany asks as she lays Santana down on the long and wide board.

“Definitely, the bros and I used to dance all at once on this.” She grabs Brittany’s hand and kisses her fingers.

“You’re so hot.” Brittany steps out of her bikini bottoms and deftly climbs on top of Santana, “So fucking hot.”

“You’re hotter,” Santana reaches up and pulls Brittany down on top of her, crushing their lips together. Brittany moves her hand down, gliding past Santana’s hip, down past her ass, slightly dragging her nails down the back of Santana’s thigh to the knee and lifts. Santana immediately wraps her leg around Brittany. She tries to pull the woman closer with her leg’s new position, but Brittany doesn’t give in. Santana didn’t even know she’d closed her eyes until she opens them to find Brittany’s face hovering over her.

“May I?” Brittany’s fingers tease the skin of Santana’s inner thigh with light grazes.

“Oh God yes, Brittany.” Santana briefly wonders who could possibly say no in a moment like this. She’s practically ready for Brittany the minute she sees the woman. Lasting long isn’t even an option, not with all the teasing and the way Brittany’s got her wide open. Santana wasn’t even aware of how much she needed this until she hears herself beg for contact, “Please, Britt.”

Brittany moves her fingers over, still using the same teasing strokes, but slowly makes them longer and with more pressure. Brittany’s tongue enters Santana’s mouth at the same time her fingers slip past a different set of lips and into Santana, the sensory overload alone almost breaks Santana. It is as if Brittany knows exactly what to do, hitting all of the notes that make Santana sing, but Brittany’s building them up.

“I wanted you the moment I saw you, you know?” Brittany’s lips graze Santana’s ear. She’s not sure Santana hears her softly spoken words, especially over Santana’s own humming, “I’ve tried picturing what you’d look like, many times, but…” Brittany curls her fingers, stroking faster and faster, using her thumb to rub at Santana’s bundle of nerves, “Fuck, you’re so much hotter than I could’ve ever imagined, baby.” Brittany gives Santana a brief kiss before lifting herself up slightly, “Now, please.”

It’s not like Santana would deny Brittany anything, even if she could control her body right now, but Brittany is in total control and her body does as Brittany demands. Santana’s toes curl and all of her muscles go tight and then she breaks apart. She rides the waves of pleasure her body is experiencing with Brittany as her guide, easing her down keeping her safe, letting her know she’s not alone. 

Brittany brings her hands up to Santana’s face, moving away the strands of hair that got stuck there, letting Santana catch her breath before kissing her.

“So beautiful.” Brittany kisses her again and again and again.


	5. Chapter 5

Santana wakes to find her head on a soft, warm, slightly moving pillow. She squints her eyes open to find that she’s completely wrapped around Brittany’s body. Santana notices the hand softly stroking through her hair and looks up to find Brittany staring down at her with a soft smile on her face.

“Hey.” Brittany whispers. It’s too early for normal voices and hers is a little strained from the night before.

“Mmm, hey yourself.” Santana smiles lazily and squeezes Brittany’s body closer. She nuzzles at Brittany’s chest for a moment, before placing a kiss between her breasts. Brittany’s breath hitches and her nipples harden. Santana looks up again, meeting dark blue.

“Yeah?” Santana makes strokes with her thumb on Brittany’s hip.

“Oh, yeah.” Brittany’s fingers sink deeper into Santana’s hair and tighten as Santana places another kiss, this time on a breast. “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.”

“Really?” Santana looks up, the corners of her lips slowly rising.

“I was replaying last night in my mind,” Brittany brings her hand to her own breast and rolls the nipple between her fingers. Their breaths hitch in sync and Brittany’s body arches slightly off the bed, “I’m throbbing, I’m so ready for you, Santana.”

“Jesus, Britt.” Santana moves her hand down between Brittany’s thighs and feels how ready she is. 

“I want your mouth, ‘Tana,” Brittany gasps out, her hips rolling from the contact of Santana’s fingers. Brittany softly pushes Santana’s head away from her breast. “Your mouth, I want it on me.”

Santana doesn’t need to be told twice, but hearing Brittany’s words repeated in such a yearning tone will always be a sound she wants to hear. She starts kissing her way down Brittany’s body, enjoying the sighs and whimpers she pulls out of Brittany as she goes. Santana presses a kiss onto Brittany’s inner thigh, right next to where she wants to be, where Brittany wants her. She repeats the motion on Brittany’s other thigh, this time drawing a little heart with her tongue afterwards. 

“Please,” Brittany demands and rolls her hips forward, trying to get Santana’s mouth where she wants it.

Santana looks up at Brittany, the sight instantly burning into her memories. Brittany’s got one hand thrown behind her, gripping the headboard. The other hand is by her mouth, her teeth biting down on a knuckle. Brittany’s head is digging backwards into the pillow, her hair splayed haphazardly in every direction. The early morning rays of sun peeping through Santana’s window bounce off of the faint sheen of sweat that’s covering Brittany’s skin, and Santana could swear that Brittany’s glowing.

“Baby,” Brittany whimpers and rolls her head to see why it’s taking so long. Santana’s body shudders at the look in Brittany’s eyes.

Santana places a kiss where her fingers have been teasing, but pulls away again. There are no words on Brittany’s whimper this time, just a high-pitched almost whine. Santana reaches forward and grabs the pillow on the bed next to Brittany’s stomach.

“Lift?” Santana lightly taps Brittany’s ass with her hand. Brittany’s eyes are shut, but she lifts immediately, ready to give Santana anything if it means Santana will put her mouth back to where she wants it most. Santana places the pillow beneath Brittany’s hips, her legs naturally falling open at a wider angle.

Santana begins in earnest, licking, kissing and stroking in all the right places. It’s like she can’t get enough, before she knows it Brittany is calling out her name and breaking down around her. She helps ease Brittany down with her mouth, but Brittany starts pulling her hair. It’s a soft tug, but demanding. Santana’s a little sad that she didn’t get to watch it all unfold, and that she didn’t get to spend more time with her new favorite taste, but she’s not worried. There’s more than enough time for them and they’ll definitely be doing this again.

Santana slides up Brittany’s body and kisses her. Santana’s tongue mimics her fingers, entering Brittany and curling. 

“Fuck yes,” Brittany moves her hand down and enters Santana with her fingers. “You’re not the only one who gets to have all the fun.”

Santana wasn’t aware of how ready she was, there’s no way she’s lasting long, not with Brittany’s talented fingers. Santana wants to get Brittany off again first, though, and it almost seems like a competition of who could bring the other to orgasm first. Their legs intertwine, their breasts collide with their panting breaths, Santana can tell that Brittany’s about to go ‘cause she’s biting her lip in the way she did last night, the times Santana was able to watch. They’re forehead to forehead with their eyes open and apparently Santana has a tell as well, because Brittany raises an eyebrow and gives a little smirk before Santana’s body betrays her. 

Santana gets her senses back and notices Brittany still riding her fingers, little grunts of frustration escaping her mouth. Santana leans forward with a smile and kisses Brittany, then uses her thumb to rub Brittany’s clit in just the right way and yeah, Santana definitely wants to get used to this.

-x-

“Can I keep you?” Santana whispers into Brittany’s ear when she feels her waking up from her impromptu nap. Brittany gives a long stretch of her limbs and rolls over, smiling, to look Santana in the eye.

“I’m yours.” Brittany kisses her and they keep it light, content to just be in each other’s arms.

“We should probably get out of bed sometime today.” Santana crawls on top of Brittany, rests her arms on the chest beneath her, and looks down at Brittany’s smiling face.

“But I wanna stay like this,” Brittany loosely wraps her arms around the small of Santana’s back.

“I mean, who wouldn’t?” Santana raises herself up and wiggles a little bit.

“Oh, you’re full of yourself now, huh?” Brittany laughs and playfully swats at Santana’s arm.

“Hey, I know I’m hot,” Santana shrugs and lowers herself back down to give another kiss.

“You’re sriracha, baby,” Brittany whispers between kisses.

“Damn right I am.”

“Santana! It’s Quinn, she’s been – HOLY FUCK! Sorry! Sorry!” A male voice suddenly bursts into their world.

“What’s this about Quinn?” Santana gets off of Brittany and looks at Mike who is covering his eyes and muttering sorry over and over again. Santana looks over to Brittany who’s sitting up, but doesn’t seem concerned by the sudden appearance, “Mikey, it’s okay. You’ve seen my tits before.”

“But not with other tits, doing stuff.” Mike feels for the wall and turns towards it, his eyes still covered by his hand.

“Mikey.” Santana half giggles half coos. How her best friend remained this adorable after all of these years is beyond her, but she loves it. She crawls out of her bed and goes to her chest of drawers where she pulls out a pair of underwear. Santana puts on the black and yellow Batman short boxer briefs and looks for a t-shirt. 

“Those are cute.” Brittany giggles as she walks up behind Santana. She pulls on the elastic waistband, “Mind if I borrow a pair?”

“I mean, they might be tight, but sure.” Santana shrugs and reopens the underwear drawer.

“You calling me fat?”

“I’m sayin’ I love your ass.” Santana smirks and looks over to Mike who’s still staring at the wall, “You can tell us about Quinn and stare at the wall at the same time, Mikey.”

“No, I’ll let you dress first. If I talk I might forget and open my eyes.” 

“You’re cute.” Brittany laughs as she pulls up her red and green Robin underwear. 

Santana turns around and raises her eyebrow at Brittany’s selection. She smirks and gives Brittany a quick kiss. Santana hands Brittany a faded grey vintage Yamaha t-shirt before slipping into her own black Sector 9 tee.

“Mikey, we’ve got clothes on now, you pussy.” 

“Quinn’s been taken and Puck’s gone off after her.” Mike turns around and looks Santana in the eye.

“Taken?” Brittany squeaks.

“The Twelve?” Santana steps towards Mike.

“They want to teach him a lesson.”

“Lesson?” Brittany repeats, looking from Santana to Mike and back.

“And he goes running off half cocked without a fucking plan ‘cause he’s a fucking idiot like that.”

“Essentially.” Mike smiles ruefully.

“Where they at?” Santana picks up a pair of her jeans off the floor and puts them on. She turns to a bewildered looking Brittany and points to her closet, “You’re too tall for my jeans, but I’ve got some of Puck’s old boardshorts hanging in there.”

“Headquarters.”

“Fuck, I hate Anaheim.” Santana runs a hand through her messy and tangled hair, “Where are Brittany’s clothes by the way?” 

“Dad likes Disneyland,” Mike shrugs. “Puck was going to drop off all your stuff, but he and Quinn kinda got into a huge fight after you left.”

“A fight, about what?” Brittany emerges from the closet wearing the most obscenely neon green shorts that should cause blindness just from their appearance. Santana had forgotten about those, she’d hidden them in the back of her closet for a reason. Figures.

“It got confusing really fast, but Puck freaked out ‘cause he thought Quinn was implying that they should move in together or something.”

“So Quinn went home alone—“

“In Puck’s truck.” Mike nods.

“Which gave The Dragon’s the perfect opportunity.” Santana rolls her eyes.

“Yup. He went over to her place first thing this morning to apologize and she was missing, with a note addressed to him on the front door.” Mikey shrugs, “I only know ‘cause he called me asking if I had any part in it.”

“Aww, Mikey, you know he didn’t mean it like that.” Santana gives Mike a hug, “He’s just all Hulk-Puck right now, not thinking properly ‘n shit.”

“They’ve been really mad at him lately, ‘Tana.”

“Hey, we’ll figure this out. I’m sure a deal can be made or something.” Santana straightens out Mike’s vest, “We’ll get them back.”

“I’m going with you.” Brittany says from behind them.

“What? You don’t even—“ Santana turns around and is immediately cut off.

“It doesn’t matter. Quinn has been taken by some form of gang, I’m assuming, and you and Mikey are about to go after her and Puck. You need people on your side, and I’m people.”

“Britt.” 

“I meant it when I said I’m yours, but you’re also mine now, Santana.” Brittany steps to Santana, “No one messes with what’s mine and gets away with it.”

“Normally I’d bitch about being a possession, but that was really kind of hot.”

“Not now, Santana.” Mike sighs.

“I know, bro.” Santana laughs and shakes her head. Brittany winks at her.

“It’s probably safer for Britt to be with us.” Mike shrugs, “If they went after one of your best friends…”

“You’re right,” Santana turns to Britt. “Okay, you’re coming with us, if you’re sure about this.”

“You couldn’t keep me away if you tried.”

-x-

They drive in through the back entrance, down the long driveway that rounds the tennis court. Santana knows that Mike has always hated his dad’s house in Anaheim Hills, but it’s always difficult for her to not be impressed by the blatant expression of excess wealth that surrounds her. They enter through the huge wooden doors with iron bolts that Santana knows, first hand, aren’t there purely for aesthetics. A rival gang had grown frustrated at their best racers consistently losing to Santana and decided to try and force The Dragons into something more to their liking. Santana had been busy improperly using the billiard table with a friend when alarms started blaring, metal shutters slammed down over the windows and four of The Dragons security force ran through the room with automatic rifles. From that day on, the house never looked the same to Santana. It was still breathtakingly beautiful, but it felt like walking into a fortress designed to protect against battle rather than a place to relax.

“This place is beautiful,” Brittany whispers into Santana’s ear. Santana nods and grips Brittany’s hand tighter, pulling the girl closer. The sand colored limestone walkway and matching granite walls that surrounded them were welcoming, a visual illusion to give visitors a sense that they were safe. Santana knew how safe the walls were, but only for those whom The Dragons welcomed.

“The most deadly things are.” Mike leads them down the path to the true entrance of the house. He pauses at the door, “The cellar?”

“Puck, in the same room with your dad’s precious wine collection?” Santana shakes her head.

“Good point.”

“What’s in that direction?” Brittany points to a white wooden gate that is ajar.

“Pool.” Mike sighs 

“Pool.” Santana rolls her eyes and follows, pulling Brittany with her.

They walk through the gate and around the corner and are met with a lagoon-like pool and spa area that look like they belong at a hotel, especially with the cabanas set up in various spots around the pool. They see Puck gesturing angrily at two men at the cabana the furthest away from the house and head over.

“Puckerman, you honestly thought that we’d just let you walk away?” Matt Rutherford straightens the collar on the orange silk dress shirt beneath his Dragon’s leather jacket. His smile hardens, “The Dragons would be losing such a useful pack mule. A consistent little _bitch_ is hard to find.”

“I’ll show you who the bitch is, Rutherford.” Puck flexes his jaw and fists.

“Puck, no.” Santana says quietly, walking up to the men. She sees the back of Quinn’s head or what she assumes is the back of Quinn’s head. The long blonde hair has been cut off at a jagged angle, as if they’d put it in a ponytail and cut through it with a sword. She’s tied to a chair on the lawn behind the men, overlooking the valley below. 

“Slopes, we’ve been waiting for your fine ass,” Rutherford looks her up and down and she can feel the bile rising in her throat.

“That’s quite enough, Matthew.” The older gentleman in the white linen suit and red silk shirt standing next to Rutherford steps forward, “So glad you could make it, Miss Lopez. Michael, what a surprise.” 

“Yes, father, I know you’re quite shocked that I would be here when my friends are in trouble.” Mike stands next to Brittany, making sure to keep an eye on the area behind them just in case.

“You are still my son, Michael. Even if you’re no longer with The Dragons, I still deserve a little respect.” Mike’s father turns, his eyes briefly catching on Brittany before settling on Santana, “I see you brought a friend to our little – business meeting.”

“She’s none of your concern.” Santana nods, “If you’re going to snatch up the people that mean the most to me, you might as well do it in one go, Elder.”

“Damn, Slopes, I missed seeing your balls.” Rutherford laughs.

“Slopes?” Brittany turns to Mike; her whisper that was meant to be quiet explodes in the silence that had surrounded them.

“Girly doesn’t know about the great and undefeated Slopes?” Rutherford claps his hands together.

“Undefeated?”

“Not now, Britt.” Santana shakes her head.

“Aww, baby girl doesn’t know that you used to race motorcycles _illegally_ for money, Slopes?” Rutherford smirks, there’s a hard glint to his eyes. He looks up at Brittany, “She got her nickname from racing Mulholland, in the rain, at two in the morning, and being the only one to finish.”

“Beat the time record too.” Pucks nods with pride.

“Puck, not helping.” Santana shakes her head.

“I thought you couldn’t drive.” Brittany furrows her brow.

“Oh, she can’t now that she’s gone soft. Isn’t that right, Slopes?” Rutherford sneers and Santana wishes she let Puck hit him when he had the chance.

“That’s enough, Matthew.” The Elder says softly, and everyone stands up a little bit straighter, “Why don’t you go check in with our other divisions.”

“But –“

“Now, Matthew.” The Elder brushes some imaginary lint off his jacket, ignoring Rutherford as he huffs and walks away, “I am sorry for that, Santana. He’s an excellent, and loyal, pit-bull, but not the brightest.”

Puck snorts and Santana grabs his harm, stalling him from making whatever comment he was about to make.

“It’s fine, Elder,” Santana bows her head in respect. She doesn’t want to push her luck, not with everyone who’s so important to her within The Dragons grasp. 

“We both know that it is not,” The Elder raises Santana’s head with his fingers, making her look him in the eyes. “He still does not understand how letting you go was beneficial to everyone. Despite what you and Michael might think, I consider you family. Actual family, not this business I run. I knew that the best thing for you would be to leave us after your accident; you never would’ve healed the way you have. However, I also knew that in letting you go, there’d be more money to be made. I hate to make it sound like a business transaction, Santana. But there’s little profit to be had when everyone knows who is going to win.”

“She was that good?” Brittany tries to whisper in Mike’s ear, but everyone hears it again.

“Your friend is adorable,” The Elder laughs and winks at Santana who is blushing. “Undefeated, my dear. It was wonderful for recruitment, I must say, but horrible for the financials.”

“Please.” Santana rolls her eyes.

“Okay, not horrible,” The Elder smirks. “But letting you leave without any consequence befalling you, well, that was easy enough to orchestrate with The Twelve.” He walks in front of Puck, “Noah, on the other hand.”

“You’d be losing a valuable asset and would take a substantial loss.”

“I see William has been teaching you a few things about business,” The Elder nods.

“He also taught me that a deal can always be found.” Santana tilts her head and puts her hands on her hips, “So let’s stop scaring the crap out of my girlfriends and let us know what must be done.”

“You aren’t going to like it, Santana.”

“Yeah, that was a given.” Santana shakes her head. She feels Brittany slip her hand into hers and she squeezes.

“The Twelve have decided on three options: Puck stays on for ten more years, long enough to continue being a much needed asset to The Dragons and to train the new recruits.”

“Ten years? That’s ridiculous!” Puck throws his arms up in the air. Santana silences him with a look.

“You may get your time reduced in half if Michael decides to stay on with you, working for those remaining five years.”

“I’ll do it.” Mike steps forward, but Santana grabs his arm.

“Mikey, no. There’s three options, let’s hear everything first.” She squeezes his arm and nods at The Elder.

“The final option is a race,” The Elder pauses as he sees the people before him relax. “Not a street race, my children. No, that would be far too easy, wouldn’t it?” He lets out a rueful laugh, “No, this would be a cross country race, dirtbikes.” The edge of his lip rising in distaste, “If your team finishes first, Puck is released immediately with no consequences. Your little group of friends is safe from The Dragons interfering in the future.”

“And if the team doesn’t finish first?” Mike questions.

“Then the team is property of The Dragons for the entire ten year duration.” The Elder shrugs, “Oh, and Santana? The Twelve demanded that, if you chose this option, you must be on the team.”

“But we’ve never even been on dirtbikes before!” Santana starts pacing. She thought there’d be at least one viable option, the Dragons had been so understanding after she crashed her bike. She hoped that there’d be something that didn’t seem like her friends would have to sell their souls.

“Those are your choices, Santana. Choose wisely.” The Elder signaled to the two men standing on the sides of Quinn’s chair, “You don’t need to decide right this moment, but you must do it soon. I cannot distract The Twelve on this subject; I used the last of my favors to allow Michael to pursue his dreams. It’s why this little…situation arose. They felt I was growing soft and acted behind my back.”

“Quinn.” Puck wraps his arms around her, “I’m so sorry. I love you, I’m so, so sorry they did this to you.” He kisses the crown of her head.

If The Twelve were willing to snatch up Santana’s loved ones to keep Puck in line, how tight would their grasp be for the following ten years? He’s always been a bit of a hot head, letting emotions of the moment control his mouth, and will they start punishing him now? Santana wasn’t willing to let Mike get back in, who knows what they’d come up with at the end of his time to keep him in their clutches for longer. No, it seemed like there were no options, it was now or never and they had to take advantage of this _opportunity_ that was given to them.

“How many to a team?”

“Tana, you can’t,” Puck tried, but was cut off with a look.

“We can talk about this later.”

“Four to a team, same stakes apply to everyone.” The Elder had his back to them, overlooking the valley below, “The Twelve will decide where the race will take place, once you’ve made your decision.” He turned to look at them, “I’ll keep it local, so you can at least practice on similar terrain, that’s about as much sway as I can pull on this. Do not enter into this lightly; Rutherford and his crew have been playing in the mud since they were little wolves pretending to be lambs. The Twelve will surely choose a squad recommended by him.”

“Noted.” Santana nods.

“Do give the year options a thought, Santana.” The Elder picks Santana’s hand up in one of his and covers it with the other, “The race will be nearly impossible for you.”

“Nothing’s impossible.” Brittany’s voice fills their ears again. The Elder looks up amused.

“She’s truly a unique creature, isn’t she?” He winks at Santana, “I do think, if this all works out, you should see about getting her to stick around you lot.”

The Elder steps back and nods at the group. “I do hope you put those arrogant fools in their place, Santana. Though, I am sorry it has come to something like this.” The Elder sighs then turns and leaves them there to decide their fate.

“Tana, it’s just ten years,” Puck’s still holding onto Quinn, like he’ll never let her go again. “I can deal with that.”

“Ten years too long,” Santana moves her gaze from Puck to Mike. “No, the five years is not an option, Mikey.”

“Tana, you can’t even ride a motorcycle without freaking out.” Mike shakes his head, “How can you expect to win a race?”

“Is it true?” Brittany’s voice pulls everyone’s attention, “Is it true what they said? That you’re that good on a bike?”

“Yeah, I was.”

“Mullholand, at night, in the rain?”

“Yeah? What about it?” Santana scrunches her brow.

“What about you two?” Brittany looks to Puck and Mike, “How well do you two place?”

“We usually win, not as consistently as ‘Tana though,” Mike shrugs.

“Yeah, we don’t have the same death wish as she did back then,” Puck chuckles and shakes his head.

“And this Rutherford, how’s he rate?”

“Britt, what are you?” Santana tilts her head.

“Not as good as us, certainly not as consistent in the win column, Puck and I can usually beat him easily in a drag.” 

“But street is different than dirt, Brittany.” Puck loosens his hold on Quinn so she can turn in his arms.

“Doesn’t matter,” Brittany shakes her head. She had a determined look on her features and Santana wasn’t quite sure that she liked it. Brittany turned to Santana, “You should race, you’ll win.”

“Uhm, Britt?”

“I don’t want to talk about it here,” Brittany looks behind her at the mansion, and then turns back to Santana. She steps closer, “Just trust me on this.” Brittany turns to everyone else, looking each person in the eye, “Trust me, please.”

-x-

“Well, this was certainly one way of getting you to come up here.” Brittany laughs as she pushes her Honda XR100 to the center of a large dirt field with Santana next to her, carrying a large duffle and a basket.

“I would’ve come on my own.”

“I know, but now I get the chance to teach you something I love.” Brittany shrugs and kicks down the kickstand on the dirtbike, “Go ahead and drop the bag here. There’s protective gear inside, start putting it on.”

“Britt, I don’t know if this’ll work.”

“It will and if it doesn’t, we’ll have a nice little picnic and figure something else out.” Brittany steps forward and presses a reassuring kiss on Santana’s lips, “But it will work.”

“How can you be so sure?” Santana leans her forehead against Brittany’s with her eyes closed.

“Because I’ve helped someone get over their fear of riding, in the past.” Brittany catches some of Santana’s hair in her fingers and traces it behind Santana’s ear. “I had to teach myself, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Brittany kisses Santana again and pulls away, “Hurry up and get your pads on, I can’t wait to get you all dirty.”

“B, I’m always dirty.” Santana smirks.

“Just you wait.” Brittany winks and laughs.

Santana feels like she’s about to go play paintball with Puck, with all this gear on her. When she raced she barely had any protection at all, just her leather jacket, boots, gloves and helmet, but all this stuff that Brittany has made her put on seems a little bit ridiculous. She’d feel a bit self conscious if Brittany wasn’t there with her, wearing similar gear of her own.

“You don’t actually need all this stuff to ride, but I want you to feel safe and it really helps.” Brittany gives Santana a surprising and strong push, knocking Santana over.

“The Hell, Britt?” Santana stands up immediately and throws her arms out.

“Did it hurt?”

“What?” Santana gets out before she’s being knocked over again.

“Does it hurt?” Brittany stands over Santana and offers her hand. Santana sits there for a moment, maintaining her rage and then it clicks in her head what Brittany was doing.

“The ground’s softer.”

“A lot softer than pavement, duh.” Brittany rolls her eyes while she helps Santana stand up.

“The padding’s uncomfortable to land on, but I can see how it spreads out the impact.” Santana looks behind her and down to her ass, “Never thought that ass protectors did anything.”

“Well, they do, besides hiding that delicious tush of yours.” Brittany pouts.

“Don’t worry babe, I’m already thinking of that hot tub on your porch.” Santana winks. Brittany knocks her over again.

“You need to focus and not distract me! We can have sex anytime or anywhere Santana,” Brittany puts her hands on her hips and looks at Santana sternly, “This is important. It’ll be a whole lot easier for you to deal with your fears now, before your friends get here, than afterwards and I’m having to teach everyone.”

“Sorry Britt.” Santana stands up, “I’m focused, I promise.”

“No, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. I’m just worried about you, Santana.”

“I’m good, Britt.”

“Okay, but if this gets to be too much for you, I want you to promise me that you’ll stop.” Brittany chews her lip.

“You got it, babe. I promise I’ll tell you if it gets too much for me to handle.” Santana moves her hand to Brittany’s face and uses her thumb to stop Brittany from biting her lip. “So, how we going to do this?”

“You know how, a couple weeks ago, we surfed that wave together?” Brittany walks over to the nearly empty duffle bag and pulls out their helmets.

“Yeah?”

“Well, we’re gonna ride this baby bike together and we’ll crash it, together.” Brittany nods and hands Santana a cyan white and black helmet and goggles.

“Uhm, Britt, I practically start shaking at the thought of riding anywhere on a bike nowadays.”

“Then close your eyes.” Brittany shrugs. 

“How is that going to help anything?”

“Well, you can pretend that you’re, like, riding a mechanical bull or something.” Brittany puts on her purple and black helmet, “Listen, this worked for me when I was too scared to get on a bike again, okay?”

“What happened?”

“You couldn’t have asked that before I got my helmet on?” Brittany shakes her head.

“It wasn’t in the conversation then. I don’t read minds, babe. No matter how well I know your body.” Santana winks.

“That was bad,” Brittany shakes her head. She sighs and takes off her helmet, shaking out her hair to get it into some sort of order. “If we’re going to talk about this, we might as well hydrate at the same time. Riding takes a lot out of you.”

Santana helps Brittany lay out the red and black plaid blanket that was packed in the basket. They sit down on it and break out their canteens. Brittany looks off into the distance and starts telling Santana about her first boyfriend, a boy named Finn. How they thought they were in love, like destined to be together for eternity type of love. They were teenagers, what did they know.

“We met at one of my motocross events. He was in the guys division, racing on a Kawasaki that was probably too big for him to be riding on, but he could handle it. I’d just won my event and was headed towards my pit area, the back of my dad’s pickup. He was heading out and accidentally ran into me. Like, totally knocked me over. Most of the guys at these events are entitled little pricks. Fearless and usually allowed to get away with anything they want, I’d gotten used to them yelling at me or mocking me relentlessly and I didn’t expect anything different from Finn when he ran into me. Except he didn’t, he was sweet and apologetic and so nice that he missed his heat from helped me limp back to my truck. We hit it off from there, sharing a love of each other and our sport and stuff. 

“The thing was, being the four-time Champion of the Mid Ohio Valley Hare Scramble Cross Country Series of our divisions, (well, he was only two-time Champion, but we never talked about that) became really reckless, thinking that we were invincible on their bikes. In our free time we were always out free-riding, looking for anything that’d be a challenge for us. There wasn’t anything we couldn’t tackle, it might’ve taken us all day, but we’d eventually conquer the obstacle and then some.

“We...started messing around on our bikes. We’d been messing around on Finn’s bike for ages; he was taller than me and it was such an advantage for riding him while he was sitting on his bike. Sometimes he’d keep the bike on, you know, revving the engine, using the vibrations to help get me off.” Brittany pauses and plays with the top of her water bottle, staring at it, but Santana could tell that Brittany wasn’t actually looking at it. Santana lays her hand on Brittany’s back and moves it in circles, eventually Brittany continues, “This one time, though, he accidentally let go of the throttle and the bike gave this jerk, which really got me going. It’s such a stupid thing to do, looking back on it now, but we thought we were invincible and it felt so good. So, I started riding Finn while he was riding the bike. Sure it got a little dirty, well a lot dirty, but the sex was delicious.

“Except, Finn got a bit too distracted just one time and drove us full speed into a tree.” Brittany turns to Santana, “We ended up in the hospital. It’s how I got my eyebrow scar. He’s a paraplegic now.”

“Shit.”

“We tried to make it work, you know, our relationship?” Brittany shakes her head, “But it was hard for him, I was a constant reminder of everything he thought he lost and I felt guilty that I could walk when it was just as much my fault that we were on that bike, you know?”

“Fuck, Britt, and I’ve been freaking out over breaking my arm, essentially.” Santana pulls Brittany into a hug.

“But you, like, died.” Brittany twists and turns around, “That’s huge, Santana.”

“I see Quinn’s been spilling my secrets?”

“Not all of them, I promise.” Brittany nods, “She would just, occasionally bring up this patient that she was working with and how much they had to fight through. I kinda put the pieces together after meeting you.”

“It’s cool, Britt.” Santana kisses Brittany on the nose, “You ever hear from him, Finn?”

“Yeah, we’re still friends. I kinda forced him to join me in getting over our fear of riding dirtbikes, you know, ‘cause we missed it so much.” Brittany turns around and lays herself into Santana’s embrace, “I found out that they make modified bikes that would let Finn ride again and I got him one for Christmas.”

“Wow, that’s awesome.”

“Well, I thought so, but he just yelled at me.” Brittany shrugs, “There was a lot of yelling and frustration, but we just turned our fear and pain into something useful, something we could conquer by climbing onto those bikes again and just riding.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, you just gotta convince yourself that you’re bigger than your fear of falling or crashing or whatever and then, like, force yourself to battle it.” Brittany tilts her head to the side so she can look at Santana, “Nothing’s impossible, San.”

“You’re amazing, you know that?” Santana kisses Brittany.

“I think you’re pretty amazing too,” Brittany smiles.

-x-

Brittany hadn’t been kidding about riding in dirt being a rougher ride. Santana’s pretty sure that the constant battle against her fear only took more out of her. Brittany was amazing though, took things slow and easy. She’d slow down when she felt that Santana was breathing too fast, in danger of hyperventilating. Santana might’ve forgotten her promise to not push herself too much, but Brittany seemed to know when things were getting too intense and would back off, saying that they needed a break or a snack.

They started simply, with Santana behind Brittany on the bike, holding on for dear life with her eyes closed. Brittany would just slowly ease out the clutch and they’d mosey along, slowly picking up pace the longer they stayed on the bike. It wasn’t too long before Santana was able to open her eyes for the slow ride. Brittany rewarded Santana with a nice long makeout session, on the blanket, because Brittany’s never taking those sort of risks again. 

Then, they practiced falling, which was actually more difficult than riding the bike was for Santana. Just the simple act of standing on the bike and falling over with it almost sent her into a panic attack, but Brittany was right there, telling Santana to breathe and to focus and ‘hey, is that a unicorn?’ Santana’s pretty sure, if she had her wits about her, that she wouldn’t have actually expected to see a unicorn when she looked to where Brittany was pointing, but it certainly worked. 

“Your fear is just as real as that unicorn, Santana.” Brittany had said before giving her a strong hug. 

Santana realized that Brittany was right. Which was, well, Santana would’ve rather been having to round up unicorns than fighting fears, but realizing that both were only in her mind certainly helped her get back on that bike and try again. By the time they called it a day, Santana was able to ride, for brief moments, all by herself. It really helped that Brittany had her on a beginner bike, lighter, smaller and less powerful; it reminded Santana of when Puck first taught her how to ride.

She was really fucking sore and tired though, and this hot tub was like heaven.

“You did really well today, San.” Brittany massages Santana’s shoulders.

“So tired, babe.” Santana leans back and rests her head on Brittany’s shoulder, “So tired.”

“Aww, well you worked really hard and riding in the dirt takes more energy than street.” Brittany moves her hands down Santana’s sides, massaging her back muscles as she goes.

“Mmm, feels good.” Santana traces the shape of Brittany’s neck with her nose. She purrs as Brittany lowers her hands even further. Santana places a kiss on Brittany’s neck

“You deserve a little relaxation.” Brittany slowly moves her hands to Santana’s front. One hand moves up to Santana’s breast, the other moving down below Santana’s bellybutton tracing little circles along the way. 

“Bay,” Santana’s breath hitches as she feels Brittany softly roll her nipple. Her hips rock forward, trying to get Brittany’s other hand where she wants it most, “bee.”

Brittany obliges, moving her hand lower, teasing Santana’s folds. Santana whimpers.

“I’m so proud of you, Santana.” Brittany lowers her head and kisses the spot behind Santana’s ear. Brittany kisses that spot again while tweaking a nipple as she enters Santana with her other hand. Brittany thrusts slowly, building Santana up with slow waves of pleasure. “You were so fucking hot in my gear, baby. I almost mounted you that first time I pushed you down today.”

Santana jerks her hips forward, urging Brittany to pick up her pace.

“You looked so fucking delicious all splayed out on the ground like that, with just the faintest sliver of your midsection peeking through all the gear.” Brittany bites Santana’s earlobe and starts languidly rubbing circles with her thumb on Santana’s clit. She drags her nails down Santana’s abdomen, “I wanted to rip them all off and have my way with you, Santana.”

“Fuck, Britt.” Santana gasps out.

“Then you mentioned this hot tub we’re in right now,” Brittany slowly starts to pick up speed. “I almost lost all my control.” Brittany moves her hand back up to Santana’s other breast and massages. “Then on that blanket, when we were making out? Fuck, baby. I wanted to taste you so bad.” Brittany starts thrusting harder and faster, “But I knew if I started, I wouldn’t want to stop and we’d be out there all day with sunburns in really awkward places. It was so hard,” Brittany nips at Santana’s earlobe again, “to be riding that motorcycle when I’d rather be riding you.”

“Brit, Jesus, fuck, I’m gonna –,” Santana pulls Brittany’s head down into a scorching kiss just before she loses all control and her body crests and breaks. Brittany brings her down slowly. 

Santana gives her a sloppy exhaustion drunk kiss and mumbles, “Love you,” before passing out. 

Brittany’s not going to hold Santana to anything she said in a post-orgasmic pre-passing out bliss, even if it was her first time saying something like that. She’s just going to dry Santana off and carry her up to bed. It’s not like Brittany didn’t already know, anyway.

-x-

“Mama! Papi! Noooo!” Santana hears herself screaming.

“Santana, baby, it’s okay. Everything’s okay, you’re just dreaming. Come on now, wake up, it’s okay. You’re safe.” Brittany is murmuring in her ear over and over again as she rocks Santana back and forth. Brittany’s embrace is strong and it takes Santana a while before she gets her bearings, even longer to realize that she’s not waking up and flailing about for the first time she can remember. There are tears running down her face, she’s shaking, and she can remember her nightmare just as if she were still in it, but she’s not uselessly trying to run towards danger.

“I’m awake, Britt.” Santana nudges her head into Brittany’s.

“Oh, Santana, I was so scared.” Brittany turns her head and places a kiss on Santana’s forehead, “You were screaming so loud, sounding so broken. I didn’t know what to do.”

“It happens sometimes, especially when I’m exhausted.” Santana snuggles into Brittany’s embrace, soaking up as much comfort and warmth as she could to thaw the chill that has taken over her insides, “I get some pretty gnarly nightmares.”

“Obviously,” Brittany strokes Santana’s sweat dampened hair out of her face. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I couldn’t save them.” Santana’s breath hitches and she bites her lip.

“Who?” Brittany scoots herself backwards and leans against the headboard, she pulls Santana up between her legs so that Santana’s back is resting against her chest. Brittany wraps her arms snugly around Santana who only seems to try and burrow deeper into the embrace.

“Ma and Papi,” Santana starts playing with Brittany’s fingers. “I, uh, there was this surf competition my junior year, it was really big. My high school surf team won the right to compete and it was down at Trestles.”

“Trestles?”

“Oh, yeah sorry, it’s this surf spot in San Clemente.” Santana turns around a little bit and leans against Brittany while looking up at her, “We had a celebration dinner after the competition ‘cause we got second place. Puck and I were waiting outside while Mama and Papi went to go get the car from the lot across the street.” Santana stiffens and sniffles, Brittany pulls her closer. “They, uh…they were driving across PCH, you know, to,” Santana pauses and tries to control her tears, “to get to us and…and this drunk driver comes from out of nowhere and T-bones them into a car coming from the other direction.”

“Oh, San, honey.” Brittany rests her cheek on Santana’s head, trying to give as much comfort as she can.

“I tried to run to them, but Puck held me back. I tried to save them, I did.” Santana cries.

“Oh, honey, I’m sure there was nothing you could physically do.”

“Papi died on impact. The…,” Santana sniffles as she sits up to look Brittany in the eye, “the C.H.P. officer said that he probably didn’t feel a thing. I still don’t know if that makes me feel better and it’s been eight years.”

“And your Ma?” Brittany stroked Santana’s hair, “What happened with her?”

“They had to – their car got so twisted around and bent out of shape, they had to use the Jaws of Life to get to them and, maybe if they’d gotten there sooner, or if I could’ve got Ma out somehow –,” Santana plays with her own fingers.

“Santana, listen to me, I deal with car wrecks professionally. I know how tricky they can be, okay? There’s a lot of planning that goes into one of our car stunts, but we can never fully plan for them.” Brittany lifts Santana’s chin and looks Santana in the eye, “If they needed to use the Jaws of Life to get your parents out, there’s nothing you would’ve been able to do. Nothing.”

“But she was just sitting there; bleeding while she was waiting for the paramedics to show and it was too long.” Santana buries her head in Brittany’s chest and cries, “The blood loss was too much and she died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”

“Oh, Santana.” Brittany pulls Santana even closer and strokes the crying girls hair, “Just cry it out honey, it’s okay. Just get it all out; I’m here for you. Let it all out, love.”


	6. Chapter 6

Santana wakes up and something feels different, there’s a lightness in her heart that she doesn’t remember being there before. Perhaps it’s just waking up to the sun shining through the pine trees in the second story window of the cabin, a different view than waking up to the ocean. Well, when the coastal fog hadn’t settled in overnight she got to wake up to an ocean view, but it just wasn’t the same. Santana rolls over towards the window to take in this new view, barely able to make out the city she’s used to in the distance through the trees. She’s got a smile on her face and she can’t remember the last time she woke with one of those. Maybe there’s something in the mountain air or maybe it’s waking up in Brittany’s bed, with her scent all over the sheets. Santana buries her head in Brittany’s pillow with a grin. She feels giggly. Maybe she just over exerted herself yesterday and this is the aftermath, a giggly and euphoric morning.

Santana forces herself to roll out of bed and goes to the closet to find something to wear. She finds a pair of cyan and black Thor racing pants of Brittany’s that just call out for her to put them on. They’re slightly too large, but Santana just rolls them up at the waist and then pulls on a white tanktop. She hears music softly playing from downstairs, but brushes her teeth and hair before heading down to find where it’s coming from.

A song that came out just before she was born is playing on the radio and Brittany’s bouncing and dancing around the kitchen to it. She’s making eggs and pancakes, wearing the matching top to Santana’s pants which is slightly too large on her and comes down to her thighs. Santana leans against the grey slate counter and appreciates the view, her girl is beautiful. Sunlight from the window shines down on Brittany and wraps her in a soft glow; it reflects off Brittany’s hair like a halo and gives her a dream like quality. This dream is very much real though, Santana’s not sure how she got so lucky, but she won’t be letting go of this dream without a fight. The track changes and it’s another one Santana loves, she hears Brittany softly singing along and she’s no longer content with just watching her dance around the room.

“Come with me, don’t you worry,” Santana sings out. She crinkles her nose and smiles at Brittany’s little jump of surprise. “I’m gonna make you crazy, I’ll give you the time of your life.”

“I’m gonna take you places, you’ve never been before and you’ll be so happy that you came,” Brittany sings back, with an enormous smile on her face. She dances over to Santana and places their lips together, “Morning lover.”

“Mmm, hi yourself.” Santana smiles and leans in for another kiss, “Smells delicious.”

“Right! I’m cooking, damn you’re distracting,” Brittany twirls away from Santana and goes back to the stove and turns it off. “Especially when you’re wearing my pants like that, fuck breakfast, I want you.”

“Babe, that sounds amazing and we’ll get back to that thought later, but I’m starving,” Santana laughs. Brittany pouts, winks and turns the stove back on. Santana walks over and wraps her arms around Brittany from behind, “Believe me, you’re not alone in your cravings. I kind of really want to devour those thighs of yours right now, but I need actual sustenance.”

“It’s probably for the best.” Brittany takes the food off the stove and places it on the proper platters, “Quinn called, they’ll be here soon.”

“Quinn’s coming?” Santana helps Brittany set the large oak table.

“Yeah, she’s still mad at Puck, of course, but she feels safer with him around, you know?” Brittany shrugs, “They’ll work it out, you’ll see.”

“You’re a secret sage or something?” Santana wraps her arms around Brittany’s waist, “Knowing all the right things to do and say to help people?”

“It’s easy when you pay attention, when you love someone,” Brittany wraps her arms around Santana’s neck. 

“Yeah?” Santana bites her lip and dips her head, but Brittany lifts Santana’s chin with her fingers.

“Yeah,” Brittany kisses Santana softly. “I’m sorry I’ve been pushing you so hard, I didn’t know –“

“No, Britt, it’s okay.” Santana plays with the hem of Brittany’s shirt, “I think it was a good thing. I don’t know what, but something feels different inside. Maybe I just needed that extra little push or something.”

“Okay, but I think we’re still going to take it easy today anyway.” Brittany leans in and kisses Santana, “San, if you don’t stop playing with my ass like that, I won’t be responsible for your friends finding you covered in our breakfast on the table.”

Santana pulls her hands back, “Sorry, totally wasn’t on purpose. I mean, my hands have a mind of their own, you know?”

“Really now?” Brittany raises an eyebrow.

“Also, have you seen your ass? I mean, it’s totally got its own gravity, babe,” Santana nips at Brittany’s neck and then just rests her head under Brittany’s chin. “Especially in this shirt that barely covers it, you know? Totally not fair.”

“And you looking like that in my pants is fair?” Brittany squeezes Santana closer.

“It’s not like I knew where my clothes were.”

“Neatly folded, right next to the bed.”

“No way!” Santana laughs and Brittany nods, “Totally didn’t see them.”

“It’s okay, I like you in my clothes, it’s like you’re comfortable with me or something.”

“Of course I’m comfortable. I’m more than comfortable. I,” Santana pulls back slightly so she can look Brittany in the eyes. “I love you too, Britt.”

“Oh I know,” Brittany plants a quick kiss on Santana’s lips and winks. “You totally told me before passing out the other night.”

“I so did not pass out.” Santana can’t fight the huge smile that’s found its way onto her face, “I was simply orgasmically narcoleptic.”

“Uh huh, no. You passed out and I had to carry your ass upstairs.” Brittany laughs, “I knew I was good, but I didn’t know I was that good.”

“Ugh, shut up.” Santana shakes her head, “Just you wait until I make you pass out, we’ll see who’s laughing then.”

“I look forward to it.” Brittany kisses Santana languidly and full of love. She pulls back when she hears a car pull up outside, “I love you, Santana.”

“I love you too.” Santana leans forward for another kiss, but gets interrupted by the front door opening, “Why do I have friends?”

“Because you’re awesome.”

“Damn right.” Santana places a quick kiss on Brittany’s lips and pulls away to help her friends with their bags.

-x-

“Start stretching and, like, doing some jumping jacks and stuff to get your body ready and heart up, while I check your gear.” Brittany starts tugging on Mike’s pads, “There isn’t too much of a difference between riding on a street and riding on dirt.”

“Uh, Britt, there’s a difference.” Santana shakes her head from her bent over stretching position.

“Well, I mean, yeah.” Brittany shrugs, “But you all already know how to ride and have been doing crazy things on them for ages at this point. Actually, it’s kind of weird that you’ve never ridden in dirt before.”

“It’s not like we’re on good terms with peanut face.”

“Rutherford,” Puck supplies to a confused looking Brittany.

“We’re beach bums, Brittany.” Mike looks up from inspecting the red black and white helmet that Brittany gave him, “It never crossed our minds.”

“It’s just that most racers use free riding to train.” Brittany hands Puck a helmet with a bright Pink Mohawk on the exterior. “To match Quinns, helmet,” Brittany winks. “So, you being as good as you are on street, well you’ve got to be like, Pegauses or something.”

“Pegasuses?” Puck turns to Santana.

“Flying horses,” Santana shakes her head. “Just go with it. It makes sense in Brittany speak.”

“Cool.”

“Basically you just need to remember that you need to balance everything on the pegs, unless there’s a berm,” Brittany hands Quinn a bright pink helmet. “I mean, you’ll figure out the balance thing kinda quickly once you’re on the bikes. Either you’ll fall or you won’t, just don’t fall off a cliff okay?”

“Cliffs.” Mike blinks.

“We are in the mountains, Mikey.” Brittany giggles, “If you can’t see the ground in the distance, don’t assume that it’s there. I mean, if you do it long enough you’ll be able to read the signs or you’ll just know the area by repetition, but we won’t have that. When we find out where and what I might be able to tell you on a map, or something, if I’ve been there.”

“What’s this ‘we’ thing you keep doing?” Santana asks Brittany.

“Well, who else would be your fourth?” Brittany looks at Santana like she’s the crazy one. Santana shakes her head, knowing this isn’t the time or place for that discussion.

“Are you sure this is the best option, ‘Tana?” Puck plays with the fiberglass hair on his helmet.

“When have we ever let anything get the better of us?” Santana looks at her friends. “We’ve been through a lot of shit in our lives, but we’ve been able to conquer that shit together, always. I know I’m the weak link right now, but I’ll have my shit on lock by the time the race comes.”

“Please, Santana,” Quinn shakes her head. “If there’s anything everyone here knows, it’s that you’re the one that can be counted on.”

“Right,” Santana nods in thanks to Quinn. “Dog breath and his crew have no chance against us. They might have the experience in dirt, but we’re the ones with something worth fighting for.”

“Whānau means family, family means no one gets left behind.” Puck lifts his head up and looks at Santana with realization on his face.

“When we win this, I’m making you get that Stitch tattoo, even if I have to be the one who does it.” Santana smirks.

“We win this, I’ll name my first born after you.”

“That’s something you’ll have to take up with Quinn, tungane.” Santana laughs.

“You get Puck out, and keep yourselves out, I’ll name all of our kids Santana,” Quinn deadpans. 

“Maybe a Mike and a Brittany, keep things from getting too complicated.” Puck smiles at Quinn.

“Win and we’ll talk about it.”

“You got it, babe.” Puck gives a quick kiss to Quinn’s lips and then turns to Brittany, “Sorry, Brittany, what else do we need to know?”

“You’ll pick most of it up naturally, as you ride. Dirt isn’t about speed, getting past 50 miles per hour is rare. It’s about strategy and surfing the land, really.” Brittany bounces, “That’s the best way to explain it! You guys know how to read the ocean, right?”

“Yeah, B. Like, tides and breaks and stuff?” Santana nods.

“Like that, but you also can tell where shallow water is or where a drop off is, or a reef or rocks or –“

“Yeah, totally.” Mike cuts Brittany off with a smile.

“Sometimes you don’t see that stuff ‘till you’re on the wave and you have to get all thinky, but quick-like, so you just have to listen to your instincts and react, right?” Brittany pauses and waits for her friends to nod, “It’s like that, but on land with boulders and trees and stuff.”

“Is that how you picked up surfing so fast?” Santana tilts her head.

“I guess,” Brittany shrugs. “I learned a long time ago to just listen to my instincts when doing anything. So, maybe.”

“So, you’re saying that we’ll just know what to do when we run into a boulder we have to climb?” Puck squints.

“Kinda.” Brittany shrugs and climbs onto her motorcycle, “The best way for you to understand what I’m saying is by riding. Santana climb on with me.”

“But Britt –“

“It’s just for right now and this way I’ll know if we’re pushing you too hard,” Brittany lays a kiss on Santana’s lips before putting her helmet on. “It’s not a cold pigeon thing, babe.”

“Turkey.” Santana rolls her eyes and puts her helmet on.

“I’ll gobble you all right.” Brittany winks before turning to everyone else already sitting on their bikes, “Use the throttle to keep your speed going, expect your tires to break loose. Just maintain your throttle even if your tires are sliding, okay? The front usually grips first. Stay with me, no matter what. We’ll be going slow today just so you can get used to things and see what it’s like. If everyone stays close and something happens then Quinn and I will be there to help, so stay calm. But we won’t be doing anything too crazy today.”

Brittany nods at Santana who tightens her grip and then rides forward. She leads them in a couple circles around the dirt field a couple times before veering off into the tree line on a path that’d only be able to fit two bikes side by side, if that. Brittany weaves them through trees like they weren’t even there. It’s like she was dancing through the forest, each rock was something to bounce off of or weave around, each fallen tree was something to bound over. It seemed odd to compare this dirty and noisy thing to ballet, but Santana couldn’t help it with the way Brittany managed to glide over the obstacles.

Santana had closed her eyes when they first took off in a hopeful prevention of a freak out, but she’s opened them and doesn’t even feel any of the warning signs. In fact, she feels relaxed, almost as relaxed as she does when surfing. She feels what Brittany was saying now, how freeriding is like soul surfing and how you just ride the land. Sure there were some pretty huge differences, like if you fall off your bike you might crack your head open on a boulder, but surfing had its own risks. Santana likes how different this is from what she used to do. How the scent of pine trees, two stroke oil and dirt mixed was quite appealing to her, clean air mixed with memories of her Papi and she felt safe. 

Being so in tune with Brittany probably contributed to how safe she felt. Brittany had warned Santana that riding with two people on one baby bike was really impractical when it came to the sport, how it changes the balance and could make it more difficult to get past some obstacles. Santana totally understood that, but it seemed so easy to just know when Brittany would stand to get past something, like a fallen tree or some huge roots, and just automatically stand with her. There was less than a half second delay between their reactions and it made it all seem so easy. It was just like that one time when they tandem surfed, their bodies just knew each other.

The front tire gets caught between a group of craggy rocks and launches Brittany and Santana off the bike and onto the jagged surface below them.

“I think I flew.” Santana giggled. She was so excited from the adrenaline, the buzz of an excellent surf and from the complete lack of anxiety. Santana didn’t feel even one single indicator of a panic attack building up or coming on and she loved it. If it were going to happen it would’ve been then, when she knew they were crashing, when they were flying down into rocks, but there was nothing. There was no pressure other than the air getting knocked out of her lungs from the impact with the ground.

“If you think that’s flying, wait until I take you on some jumps.” Brittany offers her hand to help Santana up.

“Aww, babe, you ripped your shirt.” Santana notices the gash on the upper arm of Brittany’s sleeve, “You’re bleeding. Are you okay?”

“That’s nothing, San.” Brittany laughs and shakes her head, “A little blood and mud lets you know you’re doing things right.”

“If you’re sure.” 

“Yeah, it’s only a little blood. A lot of blood and you’d need a medi-copter when you’re out here.” Brittany turns to Quinn, Puck and Mike who were all catching their breaths next to them, “Maybe that’s what we should do. Let’s go back and I’ll show you how to read a map so you know where the best place to wait for emergency help would be.”

“That come in handy often?” Puck looks down at his scuffed knee and chest pads that were practically brand new when they started their ride, “Seems like these protectors make you invincible or something.”

“Well, it’s rare that you’ll need a medi-copter, but Puck, this was the bunny hill,” Quinn answers, her pads were just as clean as when she started and Puck scowls as he realizes that.

“How ‘come you’re so good at this?”

“I’ve been riding with Britt for years,” Quinn winks and Brittany laughs.

“I don’t know how I feel about you keeping Britt from us for all that time,” Santana squints.

“Aww, San, everything happens just when we need it to happen,” Brittany hugs Santana from behind. “I’m kissing you through my helmet right now, just so you know.”

“Seriously, Quinn.” Santana laughs and wraps her arms around Brittany’s.

“A girl needs to have some secrets,” Quinn shrugs. “Let’s head back, I’m hungry and there’s a BLT with extra B waiting for me.”

“Sounds good,” Puck nods and Mike does as well.

“Quinn, you lead them back. Santana and I will be right behind you.” 

“What?” Santana turns and looks at Brittany.

“I was thinking of letting you try and drive us back,” Brittany loosens her grip enough to let Santana know that there’s no pressure either way. “If you wanted to, that is. I mean, you seemed to be reacting perfectly to everything and that fall at the end, well, that was my fault. But I don’t want you to feel—“

“Britt, its fine.” Santana leans her head forward and taps her helmet against Brittany’s, “If you think I can do it, then let’s try it. With you there with me, I know nothing will go wrong.” 

“Well, nothing serious at least.” Brittany waves at Quinn and the boys who nod and take off, “Just remember to not get too excited and drive too fast okay? Keep it relatively slow, just for now.”

“You got it, Britt.”

-x-

Brittany’s house is beautiful. There are large windows everywhere; letting in tons of natural lighting and Santana can just barely make out the city covered in a smoggy haze in the distance. The wooden interior walls really give the house the feeling of it being a cabin, like the ones she always saw on television, but this house was anything but small. Brittany had been impressed by Mike’s father’s house, but Santana was far more impressed by Brittany’s home. Everything about the house made Santana feel welcome and comforted, whether it was the large comfortable couches and chairs in the sunken living room that overlooked the lake, or the little touches of pure Brittany sprinkled around the house (Santana isn’t sure why there’s a giant painting of a cat on the wall of the bathroom that says ‘You’re purrrfect’ but her heart warms every time she sees it).

She loves it all, but it was taking some getting used to, not having the ocean right next door. Santana had only been at Brittany’s for a couple weeks, but she was missing the waves. There’s a different energy involved up in the mountains, it wasn’t bad, but it was taking some time for her to get used to. Santana’s thankful for her life situation and how it can afford her things like this, like taking time off and staying in the mountains as long as she needs to deal with her issues. It’s been going better than she ever hoped it would, both with riding and with Brittany. 

Santana missed the ocean, but she wouldn’t trade waking up in Brittany’s arms and to soft kisses every morning for it. After feeling as if she were broken for so long, Santana feels like she’s finally healing and it’s all thanks to her friends, old and new, showing her that she has the strength to do it. 

“Mind if I join you?” 

Santana turns in her chair that is looking out the window to Quinn who’s pointing to the chair next to her.

“Of course, Q.” Santana smiles, “Especially if you hook me up with some of that coffee.”

Quinn turns around and goes to the kitchen, which is in the next room, and comes back with a fresh mug for Santana.

“Didn’t have to do that,” Santana takes the mug with a bright yellow duck drawn on it and takes a sip.

“I know,” Quinn sits and looks out the window.

“Thanks. How you doing, Quinn?”

“Oh, you know.” Quinn smiles ruefully.

“No, I don’t or I wouldn’t ask.” Santana puts her mug down on the small table between their chairs, “I want the truth, Q.”

“I’m dealing,” Quinn shrugs. “It’s not like I didn’t know that he was involved in a gang, but I guess I just didn’t expect that it would affect me.”

“I know it doesn’t help, but we never thought that they’d do anything like that to one of us.” Santana looks out at the vista before them, “We were always treated as family, given a certain freedom ‘cause of Mikey. I guess we took that for granted, especially when they let me go so easily.”

“It’s funny; I think I was more frightened by the suddenness of it all.” Quinn takes a sip from her own mug, one with a purple dolphin on it, “I don’t know who took me, but I never actually felt like my life was in danger. There was the panic of being unable to move and not seeing this force holding onto me, but I never had the feeling like I would be harmed.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Santana turns to Quinn, “I don’t know what I would’ve done if you’d been hurt in any way, Quinn. I can only imagine how Puck feels.”

“He and I have been talking,” Quinn nods. “Lots of talking, both of us trying to make the other feel better -- absolve guilt and assuage worries, but I think we just need time.”

“Compared to you and Puck, I haven’t been with Brittany that long, but I don’t know that I would’ve been as calm as Puck was.”

“Puck, calm?” Quinn laughs.

“Well, yeah, I mean he flew off on his own and stuff, but the fact that when we got there and he wasn’t pummeling Rutherford – he was keeping himself in line for you,” Santana nods.

“You would do the same for Brittany.”

“No, I won’t ‘cause it’s not going to happen.” Santana looks out the window, but isn’t focusing on the view, “No, we’re going to win this thing and we’ll never have to worry again. I just gotta get my shit together.”

“It’s hard, being on the sidelines,” Quinn whispers after a long pause.

“What?” Santana looks at her, “Q, no. It’s hard enough having to let Brittany race.”

“Let?” Quinn smirks.

“Shaddup.”

“This is going to sound silly.”

“Is it about Brittany, ‘cause I doubt it.” Santana grins.

“I think she’s a lucky charm, actually.” Quinn smiles at Santana’s look of confusion, “Things just have a way of going right when she’s around.”

“She met you ‘cause of a broken leg, Quinn.”

“Right, well, no.” Quinn laughs, “Stuff happens for everyone, Santana. It just seems like when stuff happens to her, it’s for a higher purpose or something.”

“I love her, but what?”

“Well, just that, actually.” Quinn gestures at Santana with her hand, “Like you never expected to feel like you do now, right? She might’ve met me because of a broken leg, but she met me. Just like you met me because of a broken arm, it’s these little things, but these little things for Brittany always seem to emerge into these awesome things.”

“Like a butterfly?”

“Yeah,” Quinn nods. “That’s why I’m not as worried as I probably should be about all this; things just have a habit of working out the way she wants them to.”

“I think I get it,” Santana nods. “Actually, I think I feel the same way, but it’s all of us. We’ve got something to fight for; something more powerful than whatever comes our way.”

“When did you turn into such a sap?” Quinn raises her eyebrow.

“Fuck if I know,” Santana laughs and shrugs, “but I’m feelin’ it anyway.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Britt took the boys shopping and then are setting up the training area.”

“Oh no.” Quinn laughs.

“I’m sure Mikey will keep them in line,” Santana grins. “It’s shopping for gear though, so, like, Britt knows what’s needed.”

“So, you love her, eh?” Quinn raises her eyebrow.

“Shaddup.”


	7. Chapter 7

It didn’t take long for Santana to forget her fears of riding a motorcycle, on dirt at least. The course Brittany had come up with was fun and challenging, so completely different than Santana had ever known on street. The special training sessions with Brittany didn’t hurt either. Santana had no problem with Brittany’s positive reinforcement, especially since they got longer in conjunction with the difficulty of the tasks. Ever since that ride, holding on to Brittany as they wove through the trees and rocks, where she realized that it truly was like surfing the land, things had clicked for Santana. She no longer missed the waves as much because she was able to find that same inner peace while navigating through ruts, low hanging branches, and sheer boulders that she somehow had to get her bike to climb. The water had been freeing for her, and now she’d found a way for land to be as well. 

They trained pretty hard. Brittany had put them on a hard-core cardio and weightlifting workout schedule, she said it’d help with the bikes and Santana could tell that it did – especially when needing to lift the bike off of her. They kept the training up after the group inevitably had to return to their lives, they never knew when they would get the word about when and where the race was going to be, but they did know that it was going to happen. 

All too soon, and not soon enough, Mikey finally got the call from The Elder telling them when and where. It was all a little bit crazy, this whole thing with so much on the line, but as Santana looks at her friends in this pickup with her she felt confident. Santana, Puck and Mike had already gone through so much together, every time becoming stronger and closer, and if there was one thing they’d learned how to do it was how to tough things out. 

They’re as ready as they’ll ever be as Brittany guides her big Dodge Ram with their four bikes and gear in the bed around the corners of these windy mountain roads. Santana knows that they’ve got to be near the start of this thing, she just wishes that they were there already. The excess energy of anticipation is making her jumpy and this Black Keys album is only pumping her up even more with its fast paced, upbeat, and catchy rock music. Santana would ask to change it, but Brittany looks so cute as she bites her lip and rocks her head between verses, singing along. If Santana knew the songs better, she’d sing along too, she reckons that Mike and Puck would as well, if they weren’t sleeping – how the hell they were sleeping right now is beyond her, but they were all cuddled up on their pillows against the door, snoring. 

“We’re here.” Brittany says as she lowers the volume on the stereo and turns off the road. Santana throws the stress ball she’s been squeezing at Puck in the back; it bounces off his face and hits Mike’s as well.

“Score!” Santana laughs. Brittany shakes her head.

“Fuck you ‘Tana, we were awake.” Puck grumbles and stretches out his neck.

“Uh huh, that’s why you were snoring louder than a lumberjack’s chainsaw.”

“I don’t snore.” Puck pouts.

“Dude.” Santana laughs and Mike joins in.

“It’s a manly snore,” Brittany says as she parks the truck. “Like a manly, grumbly, teddy bear.”

“Aww, not you too Britt.” Puck throws his head back and Brittany just shrugs.

“It’s raining?” Mike asks while looking out the window.

“Yeah, I was waiting to talk to you all about that.” Brittany unbuckles her seatbelt and turns around.

“She wanted to make sure the princesses were awake.” Santana grins and winks.

“Or I wanted to see if we’d be above the cloud cover, but that works too.” Brittany sticks her tongue out at Santana, “Don’t worry about the rain, if anything it’ll even things out a bit more for us. There are always water obstacles anyway, no matter what kind of race it is, but this just means everything will be slippery. That’s about it.”

“We shouldn’t worry about slippery?” Santana scrunches her brow.

“Well, no, I just mean it will be slippery for everyone.”

“How does that work to our advantage?” Puck asks.

“It just evens things out,” Brittany shrugs. “Like, there’s only so much you can do to train for wet courses. It becomes much more of a mind game than a physical one, you know?” Brittany looks out the window to a tiny group of people, “Let’s see what’s going on first, then we can talk strategy and stuff.”

They clamber out of Brittany’s truck and walk towards where The Elder, The Twelve and Rutherford are standing with two tall and stocky boys and a petite brunette, under a white canopy tent.

“Slopes, you made it!” Rutherford sneers, “I thought you’d chicken out for sure.”

“I’ve never chickened out a day in my life, nubbin.” Santana glares then turns her gaze to the female of his group and laughs, “What’s this? Couldn’t have me, so you got mini me instead?”

“You never had any problems calling out my name, Santana.” The woman in burgundy, black and grey argyle motocross pants – Santana didn’t even know they made those – says as she lifts her head and crosses her arms over the gold letters ‘U S C’ on her cardinal sweatshirt.

“Yeah, and even then you couldn’t last.” Santana raises an eyebrow and smirks.

“I’ll have you know –“ 

“Enough, children.” The Elder interrupts with the rolling of his eyes apparent in his voice. “The race will begin just over there,” He points over to where two neon yellow poles are sticking out of the ground. “The course comes to just over twelve miles and there are occasional markers throughout that look like this,” The Elder holds up a thick orange ribbon with a black Dragon symbol on it. “You will all start at the same time and the first team to finish, in entirety, wins.”

“G.P.S. or maps?” Brittany asks.

“Maps.” The Elder answers Brittany, “Beiste will hand you the information packs.” He raises the cuff of his slate grey suit and looks at his platinum watch, “We shall start the race at the top of the hour. That should be enough time for you to prepare.”

“Yeah, prepare for your loss, Slopes.” Rutherford laughs and Santana stares at him.

“Really, Rachel?” Santana turns her head to the woman in the cardinal sweatshirt, “I knew you were a little naive about things, but why the hell would you team up with this idiot?”

“Matthew has many redeeming qualities.” Rachel shifts her hands to her hips, when Santana just raises her eyebrows in response, she continues, “I like money, it buys me nice things. Besides, with you gone, someone needs to take your place.”

“Are there two of you?” Brittany asks.

“What?” 

“You know, so you’d be able to fill the space that Santana’s left.” Brittany grins.

“Who’s she?” Rachel tosses her hair and glares at Brittany.

“I’m the girl that taught your girlfriend that thing you like.” Brittany smiles and if Santana didn’t know Brittany as well as she did, she wouldn’t be able to see the subtle tightening of Brittany’s lips and the steel in her blue eyes. By all appearances, Brittany looks innocent, like she was just playing some verbal sparring game. Santana’s impressed, kinda turned on, and really thankful that Brittany’s on her team. 

“Dude, if I wasn’t owned by Quinn, I’d totally be trying to steal Britt from you.” Puck whispers into Santana’s ear. Santana grins and rolls her eyes.

“Come on, Tiger. Let’s leave the dwarf alone and get ready.” Santana intertwines her fingers with Brittany’s and lightly tugs in the direction of the truck. She looks to her friends, “Puck, Mike, go get our maps, please?” The boys nod in response and take off in the direction of Beiste, a monolith of a woman; especially in that bright magenta tracksuit she’s wearing.

“She must be amazing at oral.”

“What?!” Santana coughs out and almost trips over her own feet.

“Well, it’s not like she has to get on her knees,” Brittany shrugs. “I mean, there are other ways of going about it ‘cause I’ve found them, but she’s, like, the perfect height.”

“Brittany.” Santana shakes her head and looks at a smirking Brittany, “And I thought I was bad when I got competitive.”

“Competitive and possessive, best traits ever.” Brittany leans over and places a kiss on Santana’s cheek.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere but that finish line with you.” Santana tugs them to a stop next to the tailgate of the pickup, “Really though, Britt, she was a lifetime ago. I was a different person, looking for different things. Rach is hot and all – even with that weird argyle fetish – but have you seen your thighs? No competition babe.” Santana winks and Brittany laughs.

“Glad this is purely sexual.” Brittany laughs and opens up the tailgate.

“Totally.” Santana nods as she helps Brittany roll out the first bike.

“I’d hate for there to be anything lasting.” 

“Fuck no, and certainly none of that feeling shit.”

“Ugh, feelings, those are totally lame.”

“Right? And let’s not even talk about the future.”

“We can totally talk about the future,” Brittany grunts as she dislodges the last bike from its support in the bed. “If, by future, you mean sexual positions and places to do them.”

“Britt,” Santana squeaks and barely catches the bike in time. “Careful.”

“Sorry babe, got carried away.” Brittany hops down off the truck and rests her hips against Santana’s.

“I need to focus on the race and not, like, bending you over shit.” 

“I’m pretty flexible,” Brittany hums as she leans in to kiss Santana. “You can bend me over all sorts of things.”

“Britt.” Santana whines and leans in for another kiss, more heated than the last one.

“Mmm,” Brittany licks her lips as she pulls away, a huge smile on her face. “Okay, okay. Focus. No sex in the champagne room or the dirtbike race against the evil evil creepy gang people.”

“You make it sound like a movie.”

“Well, I mean, I have done this in a movie before, so…,” Brittany smiles.

“We’ve got it in the bag, then.” Santana hugs Brittany.

“Hey, listen, I wanted to give you something. I wanted to give it to you before the race so you know that I’m with you, no matter the outcome. ‘Cause we’re gonna win and I didn’t want you to think that I only gave it to you ‘cause we won, you know? ‘Cause I don’t care. Well, I mean, I care, but –“

Santana cuts Brittany off with a kiss, “I know what you mean, B. I’m with you as long as you’ll have me.”

“I hope you’re ready for forever, then.”

“Always.”

Brittany pulls out a black fine bead chain necklace from her pocket; at the center of it is a large black safety pin. “I was in the mall and I saw this and I don’t know, it seemed perfect for you. ‘Cause you’ve been through so much, but you were so strong, Santana. So strong, and you were able to patch yourself back together.” Brittany places the chain around Santana’s neck and wipes off the tears on her cheeks, “You’re so strong. You’re so amazing and I’m so in love with you and it’s all so crazy, but I know – no matter what happens today – that you’ll get through it and I want to be right there with you the entire way, no matter what, Santana. You don’t need me, but I’m going to be there whenever you want me to be.”

-x-

The rain had been pouring steadily for their hour of preparation and didn’t look like it would be letting up any time soon. They’d gone over their maps, there were areas marked for where obstacles could be expected to be, and Brittany pointed out the areas where unmarked obstacles should be expected. They’d come up with a game plan, of sticking together with Brittany as the lead. Everything was ready. They were prepared and it was time for them to go to the starting line.

“Remember, this is going to be a good three hour race, so pace yourselves. This is going to be about the smartest team, not the fastest.”

“Puck, just follow us when you get confused.” Mike winks.

“Shut it, Sneaks.” Puck laughs, “We got this.”

“Yeah, we do. I think that’s why The Elder chose this ‘cause we’re definitely smarter,” Santana looks at her friends. “Except for Puck.”

“Dude, way to boost team morale!” Puck pushes Santana’s shoulder.

“You know I love you, tungane.” Santana crashes her helmet against his, “Just surf the land, it’s about listening to your intuition and I know you know how to do that.”

“Talkin’ like you’re a pro an’ shit.”

“Have you met my girl? We got this.” Santana winks.

They roll their bikes up to the line, joining Rutherford and his crew. The two teams look completely different, and not just because Brittany had bought the team matching white uniforms with purple and cyan accents, a large purple O on their chests and a cyan ONE written on the sleeves. Brittany said she picked the outfits “’cause you’re, like, white knights going to battle and the brand just, kinda, goes with it. One team has to finish, we are one and we will win as one” she had shrugged. Afterwards, Brittany secretly told Santana that white jerseys were her luckiest color (and the one she looked best in). Rutherford’s team had scowls on their faces, like they were trying to intimidate the course or something, and that was the biggest difference between the two teams. Santana, Puck, Mike and Brittany were all smiles and jokes, they knew it was a serious race, but they were relaxed and ready to deal with anything that’d come their way.

“They’re going to wear themselves out from all that anger before they’re anywhere near the finish.” Brittany leans over and says into Santana’s helmet. Santana nods, the butterflies have made their appearance in her stomach along with the coiling anticipation at the base of her spine. The Elder steps out in front of the starting line.

“You are all aware of the stakes, yes?” He asks and everyone nods, “Then you are ready for this race to begin?”

“Green flag drops, fastest team goes and wins the race, right?” Puck jokes.

“And that definitely isn’t you, Puck.” Rutherford sneers. Puck looks over at his team and raises an eyebrow. 

“Goggles on. Engines on. Let the race begin at the signal, we shall see you at the finish line.” The Elder claps his hands, a gesture he’s used for years to signify the end of a discussion. He looks Santana in the eye and nods his head. Her life is in her own hands now.

Santana feels the chain around her neck, a comforting presence in this moment of anticipation. She looks over at Brittany who nods, then to Mike who gives a thumbs-up and finally to Puck, who is by her side like always. Santana can just barely make out that he’s waggling his eyebrows at her through his goggles. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes and he winks at her in return. No matter what, they’re in this together and that will never change. Santana brings her head forward and focuses on the start, on the course ahead of her, on controlling the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She sees the flag carrier in the corner of her eye, holding that green flag up and all she can think about is how ready for this she feels. Santana missed the thrill of a race, the growing excitement thrumming throughout her body before the start was signaled and how she seemed to have a sense about exactly when that signal would come. Brittany had told her that the start wouldn’t really matter to them, not with the way they were planning on going about this race, but Santana can’t help it. She wants to lead the pack into the tree line. She wants Rutherford to second guess everything, she wants him and his crew unsettled. Santana wants this so bad she could practically taste it.

Engines are revving, bikes rocking back and forth in anticipation of the flag. Green drops and thick tires dig deep into mud and propel the bikes forward. The mud makes the bikes squirlier, harder to control, but Santana’s got this and just guides her bike like she’s been surfing with it all these years. She looks back quickly and sees one of Rutherford’s guys, Azimio she thinks his name was, has totally ate it on the first little baby obstacle. The only obstacle between the start and the trees, a little mud pit with some logs placed just perfectly for Santana to bounce her bike off of and not even have to worry, but apparently Azimio didn’t read the pit right and got sucked into the mud pit instead. It’ll be a long time before he’ll be able to dig his bike out of all that mud. Brittany’s right next to her, keeping up, clearly letting Santana lead for this moment, but Rachel and Rutherford are right there with them. Puck and Mike are just behind them, followed by the other guy on Rutherford’s team. Santana smirks as she turns her head back around and focuses on the tree line. She opens her throttle a bit more and speeds faster towards those trees. 

Any sort of advantage she can find in the beginning will be to her favor, that’s true to any race, but Santana’s always appreciated messing with her opponent’s minds at the start of a race. It makes them over think things, and thinking is where people tend to mess up. Especially dumbasses like Rutherford. Santana knows that if she can get a decent looking lead into the trees that Rutherford will start thinking that maybe she was just faking her aversion to bikes. Or maybe she had been playing in the dirt for as long as him. Or like she actually knew what she was doing. He’ll start wondering about all sorts of things, take his mind slightly off the task at hand, and in doing so, will give Santana yet another advantage

Brittany had told them that once they hit the trees it’s easy to disappear, even if the course is marked and the lines being used to navigate are similar, it gets more difficult to gage where the opponents are and it becomes an individualistic sport. Just you and your bike versus the track, control the bike and keep smart and you’ll win. Brittany also told them that it wasn’t about speed, it was about skill. Speed was important (obviously, ‘cause you need it to win), but if their brains couldn’t keep up with how fast they were going it could end up costing them the race or even their lives. 

Santana slows down immediately after the tree line and heads right like Brittany told her to. She slows down just enough to give Brittany the lead, to let her be the team’s guide through the trees. Santana looks back to find Mike and Puck right there with her, but the other team has vanished, apparently having taken a different line through the forest. She turns around and ducks just in time to avoid a low hanging branch.

These white outfits that Brittany had picked out for them are perfect for this game of follow the leader that they’re playing. The white stands out in the dark forest, especially with the rainclouds overhead making the light sparse. The white of the jersey is bright enough to identify each other as they weave in, out, above and below the trees, but not so blatant as to be easily picked out by the other team like a bright red or orange jersey would’ve. Santana wants that element of surprise, she likes that Rutherford doesn’t know where they are, if they’re ahead or not, because it will only play into him making rash decisions instead of the best ones. 

Following Brittany is easy. It’s like this is just another one of the group’s free rides back in the hills behind Brittany’s house. The terrain is similar enough and it’s actually the same mountain range, just a bit North of where they had been practicing. Santana finds herself having fun. Perhaps she shouldn’t be smiling with so much at stake, but she can’t help it. She’s riding again. Even better, it’s like she’s riding and surfing at the same time and she’s doing it with some of the most important people in her world. She feels light in the first time since forever and she just wants to laugh as she bounces her bike off of and over these huge boulders, as if they could ever slow her for long. Not her, not Santana ‘Slopes’ Lopez. She’ll always bounce back and be stronger than before. 

Even when she flies over her handlebars for not taking the exact line that Brittany did over a set of craggy rocks, she doesn’t worry. Santana just laughs and climbs back on her bike, nodding at her crew to continue riding on. Brittany had told them that shit was going to happen on that course, that everyone crashes and it doesn’t mean they’ll fall behind. Santana loves that they’re going through this as a pack, it only makes them stronger – a constant reminder of what they’re racing for. It’s a group effort and when one falls it’s not long before the bike is picked up and they’re off again. They all fall at some point.

They’re completely caked in mud, the white of their jerseys barely peeking through in spots, by the time they reach the halfway point. Their single pit stop, where Art and Tina are waiting for them with gas canisters, water refills and energy bars, is in the middle of a dirt road that’s obviously used by Rangers. They can’t stop for too long, but it’s important to refuel not just their bikes but themselves as well.

“You guys are so awesome!” Brittany says as she takes off her helmet and wipes her face off with the clean towel that Tina handed her.

“I feel amazing.” Santana laughs. She takes a bite out of the energy bar Tina hands her, “Tina, I’m totally promoting you when we get back. Standing out here in the rain like this for us, thanks. You too Art, I’d give you a promotion but…”

“You really must be feeling good,” Tina shakes her head. “You’re like Oprah with promotions right now.”

“EVERYONE GETS A PROMOTION!” Mike throws his arms up in the air.

“Britt, did you slip something into their water or something?” Art asks as he finishes topping off the gas in the bikes.

“Nope, just the thrill of the ride, Art,” Brittany smiles and leans over and kisses Santana. “You’re doing great babe, I’m so proud of you.”

“What about us, Britt?” Puck waggles his eyebrows and puckers his lips.

“Hey, none of that, dude. I know she’s all sorts of absurdly hot covered in all this mud, but hands off bro!” Santana grins. Puck raises his hands in surrender while laughing.

“It’s getting darker,” Brittany looks up at the sky, now that she can see it with the trees cleared out of the way for this road. “Art, did you bring those things I asked for?”

“Yeah, I think these will help you better than your no-longer-white uniforms.” Art hands Brittany four red glowing armbands. He then hands the same amount and color to Santana, Puck and Mike.

“Group these around your arms, should end up being thick enough for us to see each other, but not a beacon for the other squad.” Brittany says as she puts the armbands around her upper arm, “What’s the sitch with the other team?”

“Only seen one, the girl.” Art shrugs.

“Did you know they made motocross outfits in argyle?” Tina asks and collects the last of the water bottles from the group.

“It’s probably custom,” Brittany shrugs and puts her helmet back on.

“See you at the finish,” Art nods and slaps the back of Brittany’s helmet.

Brittany leads them back into the trees and it takes a minute for their eyesight to adjust to the darkness of the forest. Santana’s tire slips off of a giant root and the back tire starts sliding, but she saves it with just the right amount of twisting and momentum. It might be the rain making everything loose, or the fact that she’s completely drenched, but Santana’s feeling the similarities between the surfing she loves to do on a board in an ocean and the riding she’s doing on a bike even more through this terrain. The mud is liquid energy and she knows how to balance on liquid, she knows the angles she needs to slide and bank off of the trunks surrounding her. Santana knows exactly how much momentum she needs to jump over fallen trees, even if they’re gigantic trunks that’d normally be seen as roadblocks. She sees how Brittany attacks the obstacles and it clicks in her brain, her body instantly translating it into something it’s used to. It’s a different kind of balancing, but it’s all about flow and reading things right. It doesn’t matter if it’s a wave or a forest, they’ve got a way of being ridden and she’s going to find it. 

Santana knows that if she were to look back at her boys, and they weren’t wearing helmets, their smiles would be as huge as hers. It’s like they’re surfing this massively long big wave session, like the time they tried to surf Mavericks, but instead of avoiding the giant rocks they’re finding ways of climbing over them and exploding off them and into the mud below. It’s a lot of work, though. Santana can tell that she’ll be spending the day in bed tomorrow, sleeping for once. She’s glad Brittany had them on an intense workout schedule to get their cardio and strength up ‘cause wrestling these motorcycles around for nearly three hours is a lot of work. Santana’s getting tired and her bum arm is going to hurt like a bitch once the adrenaline wears off, but she’s loving it.

Santana follows Brittany’s line up a particularly large boulder that leads to higher ground and almost runs her over ‘cause she’s stopped at the top. Santana raises both her hands up in a sign of ‘what’s going on’ and Brittany points. That’s when Santana sees it, a red and white bike lying at the edge of the drop they just climbed. It’s hard to see through the dark and the rain, but there doesn’t seem to be a rider next to the bike. Mike and Puck roll their bikes over to where they’re standing over the fallen motorcycle.

“Shit.” Puck yells through his helmet. 

“I think its Golden’s bike.” Mike says as he squats down to inspect the motorcycle.

“Rachel?” Santana throws her head back and looks around, “The fuck is she?”

Brittany pulls a big purple Maglite flashlight out of the backpack she’d been wearing for the race, it was full of first aid essentials and ‘just in case’ items that they never thought they’d have to use. She walks over to the edge of the drop and shines the light down, illuminating the ground below them. Puck turns on the light on the front of his motorcycle, it wasn’t night yet so they didn’t really need the lights to ride, but right now it’s essential and he walks his bike around the area up top, looking for the missing rider. 

“There!” Mike points, “Right there, her helmet and its star!” They had missed it the first couple of passes with the flashlight, the mud is practically black and Rachel’s jersey blends right in and the golden star on her helmet was the perfect shade to blend in with the fallen dead leaves, but there Rachel was on the ground below them. 

“Puck, we’ve found her!” Santana yells and waves Puck over to her.

“We need to help her,” Mike looks to Brittany.

“Duh,” Brittany puts her hands on her hips and looks down to where Rachel is. “We’ll need to leave the bikes up here; we don’t need the extra weight to worry about if we end up having to carry her up.”

“Mikey, let’s prop up the bikes so we can shine some light down there.” Puck’s already moving his bike to the edge. He lifts the back end and Mike slides his bike underneath, it’s not much light but it’s just enough. 

“Golden, you alive?” Santana says as she takes her helmet off and kneels down next to the fallen woman. Rachel nods and gingerly sits up.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Brittany rubs soothing circles on Rachel’s back.

“L-Leg,” Rachel points and her boot is pointing in a direction that doesn’t look natural.

“Well, the good news is that I know how to splint a broken leg.” Brittany shrugs, “You guys start figuring out how we’ll get her back up there and get her to the finish line.”

Brittany takes a blanket out of her bag and hands it to Mike, who immediately wraps it and his arms around Rachel. Brittany then uses the metal stakes of her backpack and some parachute cord and makes a makeshift splint for Rachel’s leg. She didn’t bother warning Rachel that it would hurt, that’d only draw more attention to the actions she was making. Rachel only lets out a squeak of pain at the setting of her foot in the splint, a true testament of her strength or of her being in shock, probably both. Mike’s rubbing his hands up and down Rachel’s arms, trying to produce more warmth, while Puck and Santana investigate the area around the boulder for possible ways back up. There weren’t any, just the way they’d gone up, and then down again, they’d have to carry Rachel somehow.

“Britt, we’re going to have to lift her up or something,” Santana walks back over to Brittany, Rachel and Mike. “Do you, like, have a magic elevator in that bag or something?”

“It’s just a thing I picked up along the way with stunting in remote locations,” Brittany shrugs. She looks at Rachel and smiles a lopsided smile. “Always be prepared and hope you don’t need to use it. I’ve got some foodstuffs too, but no elevator. You’ll have to piggyback on someone, Rachel.”

“I’ll be your Tarzan, Golden.” Mike says as he moves to Rachel’s side to look her in the eye.

“You’ll be my monkey man,” Rachel smiles and nods.

“Better than Puck,” Santana laughs. “He might be a gorilla, but he’s clumsy as fuck.”

“Shut it ‘Tana, I’ve yet to drop your ass.”

“Yeah, why drop me when you can bash my head into door jambs?” Santana winks and blows Puck a kiss, “Now help Rachel onto Mikey’s back.”

Puck moves over to Rachel and delicately picks her up and leans her over towards a standing, but braced, Mike. She wraps her arms around his neck and climbs onto his back, her good leg wrapped around his waist. Brittany takes the blanket that had been around Rachel’s shoulders and wraps it around Rachel and Mike, using it as both a heating device for Rachel and a strap to keep her in place. 

“Puck climb up first and help pull Mike up, we’ll support from behind.”

“You just want to touch my ass.” Rachel winks at Santana.

“Why can’t we just leave her here, again?”

“Because that’d be wrong, baby.” Brittany laughs and tugs Santana’s hand to follow after Mike.

Mike only slips once, while climbing back up the boulder, but Brittany is right there to keep them standing upright. They all make it to the top and move to their bikes. Santana picks up Mike’s bike for him and holds it in place as they move Rachel onto the bike, her splinted leg resting up on the handlebars of the bike. Mike climbs on behind her, making sure he’ll be able to control the bike properly, before Brittany wraps the blanket around Rachel and Mike again. 

“Where’s the other team?” Puck looks off into the distance.

“Either we were really fast or really slow, both of which wouldn’t make any sense.” Santana puts her helmet back on.

“We’re almost finished. This was the last big obstacle, the rest of the way should just be a flat meadow,” Brittany picks up her bike. “Let’s get Rachel to a medic. We’ll deal with everything else later.”

They ride out at a slower pace, leaving Rachel’s motorcycle behind. An orange glowing sky greets them as they break out of the tree line and into the large meadow. The sky has temporarily been cleared of rain clouds, but the setting sun only affords so much light on the field before them. It’s a somber way to end the day, it’d be beautiful in any other circumstance, but their worries about Rachel and the other team weigh them down. It seems almost anti-climatic for them to end such a rough and tumble race with a meadow straightaway, but they’re thankful for it. Now when their minds are on more important things and are unable to focus properly on their riding. 

Brittany leads them around the edge of the trees and they can see the finish line. A large red flag with a golden Dragons insignia on it is waving at them, showing them how close they are to their destination. Just a couple of moments before they know their fate, a couple of meters before they can get Rachel the help she needs. The exhaustion from the day is catching up to them now that the end is visible to them. Santana can feel the soreness in her muscles all the way down to her bones, she feels brittle and heavy at the same time. Just a little bit further and she can collapse into the bed of Brittany’s truck and take a nap that’d make Rip Van Winkle proud. Screw the results of the race, screw where her bike lands, screw all the mud that’s caked all over every inch of her body, she just wants to curl up into Brittany and sleep. But first, they need to get Rachel to the medic or Quinn, whoever they end up seeing first, and then they need to finish or whatever. Santana’s priorities are a bit jumbled right now.

She sees Rutherford laughing and joking around with his other teammate – Santana never learned his name, she doesn’t care to know assholes – and having a good time, not even noticing that the other team is carrying in their teammate. Santana wonders if Azimio ever got out of that mud puddle at the beginning or if they just left him there to rot, like they obviously did with Rachel. It’s hard to see with the dim lighting on the field, but as she scans the small crowd gathered around the finishing area, Santana doesn’t see the large bulky figure of Azimio’s. She doesn’t want to get her hopes up. She doesn’t want to start hoping that they didn’t just throw away ten years of their lives for saving Rachel. Santana knows it’s selfish, Rachel’s a sweet girl (when she wasn’t annoying Santana’s every last nerve) and her life is worth more than ten years in servitude to a gang, but Santana really hopes that they’re finishing before the last of Rutherford’s crew. That they’ve still won. They could be carrying in Rutherford’s last rider on Mike’s bike and Santana has no clue what that would mean to The Twelve. 

“Medic!” Brittany yells out as soon as she’s ripped her helmet off and is close enough for the crowd of people to hear. The crowd looks around at each other, obviously having no clue where a medic would be, “Fuck!”

“Father!” Mike calls as his bike, the last of the group, rolls over the line designating the finish, “Is there a doctor here?”

The Elder turns to Mike, seeing the injured Rachel in his arms and her splinted leg. The color drains from the older man’s face as he shakes his head, “We’ll call in the helicopter. Don’t worry, children.”

“Q where are you?” Santana calls out. They haven’t stopped rolling forwards on their bikes, looking for help.

“Over here guys!” Quinn’s jumping up and down on the bed of Brittany’s pickup, not too far behind the crowd. The team picks up their pace and rides over to Quinn, who has apparently broken out her first aid arsenal from the back of her car, “Really, all of you. It’s like you can’t go anywhere fun without someone getting a broken appendage!”

“Aww, babe, we just know you’ll always be here to patch us up,” Puck presses a quick kiss to Quinn’s cheek, doing his best to avoid getting mud on her, after helping Mike lift Rachel onto the bed of the pickup. “’sides you’d get bored otherwise.”

“That doesn’t mean you need to start injuring other people,” Quinn rolls her eyes.

“Golden’s always been like Mini Me, always tryna fill in Big Sis’ leather jacket.” Santana strokes Rachel’s hair.

“I’m older than you, Slopes.”

“Whatever, Golden,” Santana waves her hand like she’s dismissing a fly. 

“Your sex must’ve been really hot.” Brittany says as she stares at how Santana’s holding Rachel’s hand and stroking her hair, “Fight sex is kinda fantastic, you know.”

“Really, Santana?” Rachel snorts and shakes her head, “Where do you find your people?” She winces as Quinn pokes at her foot.

“They find me.” Santana winks at Rachel and leans over to give Brittany a kiss. She whispers in Brittany’s ear, “It was amazing, but you can’t tell her I said that. It’s this thing we do.” Brittany nods.

“Santana, a word.” The Elder calls from a tree he’s standing next to, near Brittany’s truck. Santana looks at her friends, her gaze landing on Puck who nods. Mike slides in behind Rachel, replacing Santana in comforting the injured woman.

Santana’s tired. She’d momentarily forgotten the soreness of her body and how she was caked in mud while she was sitting with her friends, trying to make sure Rachel would be fine. It’s not like she and Rachel were close or anything, but they had an understanding of each other. It was fun while it lasted and they both wanted completely different things at the time. They weren’t friends, but they weren’t enemies either and she certainly never wished any harm to Rachel. It seems unfair to Santana that it was Rachel who ended up injured, when guys like Rutherford seem to always make it through without a mark.

“Hello, Sir,” Santana bows her head.

“I always appreciated your respect, Santana,” The Elder reaches a hand forward and wraps his hand softly on the back of her neck. “You always gave it willingly. Even now, when you no longer need to, you bow. I’d take another one of you rather than ten Matthews any day.”

“Please don’t put that thought in my head, Elder,” Santana scrunches her nose and shudders. “One of him is too much.”

“Alas, he is what we’ve got left,” The Elder gives a soft and reassuring squeeze of his hand. “Especially now that we’ve no longer got Puck to lead the crews.”

Santana looks up, her eyes wide and hopeful; she doesn’t trust what he’s just implied by his words. The Elder offers a soft smile as he nods in affirmation.

“Shit, maybe I should’ve left Puck on his own if there’s going to be baby Rutherford’s running around.” Santana shakes her head and laughs.

“It’s a little late to be realizing this, young one. We don’t want you back,” The Elder winks. “Your little group caused far more trouble than you’re worth, especially today.”

“Today? The hell did we do today, Elder?” Santana gives the man a bewildered look.

“You shamed The Twelve in quite the brilliant fashion.” The Elder motions for Santana to stand next to him and look out at the view before them, he nods towards The Twelve and then towards Rutherford, “They were overly confident in their decisions without properly thinking them fully through. Most importantly, they completely underestimated you, Puck and my son. Power has corrupted their minds and I will have to show them that I still have the true control of this institution. They thought that Rutherford would bring them victory, ever the faithful lapdog that does what he’s told.” The Elder turns his gaze towards the bed of the pickup next to them, where Santana’s friends were tending to Rachel and laughing. “However, it is the mind and the heart working in perfect balance that truly bring the victories of any worth. You had no way of knowing that young Azimio’s bike had broken down, rendering it unusable for today’s race because of mud getting into the engine. You had no possible way of knowing if you were winning or losing and yet, you stopped to help an injured enemy. You stopped to help when Matthew left her there.”

“He saw her?” Santana squeaked indigently and turned her head to shoot invisible daggers with her eyes at the man they were talking about. “Fetus face just left her there in the rain and mud? What if we didn’t see her? What if—“

“Santana, he will be shown the error of his ways, trust me,” The Elder chuckles. “You have brought shame to The Twelve. They forced you into playing into their whims, yet you still acted with the honor of a true warrior. I am quite proud of you, Puck and my son today.”

“You should tell him, he thinks he’s letting you down.” Santana shrugs.

“Perhaps I will, but not today,” The Elder nods. “I think I shall let Michael take care of his girlfriend without having to worry about his dad watching over them.”

“What? Golden?” Santana whips her head back and forth between The Elder and Mike, “No way.”

“If not already, give it time. Look at him looking at her,” The Elder pauses for Santana to truly look at her friend. “It is the same way you look at Miss Champion of Ohio over there.”

“You knew?”

“Of course I did, I don’t go into any battle unprepared.” The Elder nods, “Which is why I put all my money on you ruffians. I knew The Twelve wouldn’t and that benefited me greatly. Many changes to come, young one, starting with mister – what did you say earlier, Fetus face? Always the giant imagination on you, Santana.” He chuckles.

“Thank you, Sir.” Santana turns to The Elder and offers her hand for a handshake, “Thank you for having our backs.”

“Ah, Santana, thank you for winning.” The Elder winks as he shakes her hand.

-x-

Santana rolls her Triumph out of her garage and props it up on the kickstand. She pulls the black wayfarers out of her hair and places them on her face. She looks down at her bike, freshly cleaned and gleaming in the bright Southern California sun, and smiles. Her baby was finally finished. The bike she’d decided to build in memory of her parents was ready for its test ride. 

Santana lowers the garage door and locks it in place. She’s excited. There’s no fear coiling in the pit of her stomach. No anxiety clenching her muscles. Nothing but the pure anticipation of a great ride on a classic bike with the person who helped her get back on in the first place.

“Hey sexy.” Brittany in white jeans that seem to cling every curve and a light green striped short sleeved scoop neck tee, beneath a red, black and white leather motorcycle racing jacket, walks up to Santana. She leans in for a hello kiss before handing Santana her own black leather racing jacket.

“I should be saying that to you,” Santana grins and takes the jacket. “Can those jeans be any tighter, babe?”

“You’re one to talk,” Brittany pulls on the belt loop of Santana’s black skinny jeans, pulling their hips together. “Except for those superhero chones you’re always wearing, I don’t think I’ve seen you in anything so tight. You sure you want to go on this ride and not ride me instead, baby?”

“You’re evil, Britt,” Santana laughs and leans in to kiss Brittany languidly. Brittany moves her hands behind Santana and slides them into the back pockets of Santana’s jeans. Santana purrs and pulls away, licking her lips. “Evil. And sexy.”

“Mmhmm,” Brittany kisses Santana briefly and squeezes her hands, then pulls away. “But I love you and you need this, so let’s ride this sexy beast.”

“I don’t know how I ended up lucky enough to have you,” Santana shakes her head and gives Brittany a soft smile before sliding her jacket on over her white deep v neck tee.

“I’m the lucky one,” Brittany returns the smile and plays with the necklace she’d given Santana.

“Fuck that.” Santana winks, “Puck’s the lucky one. Saved his ass and got him a wife all in one go.”

“You’re in a mood,” Brittany laughs and shakes her head. She steps away and places her aviator sunglasses on her face before putting on her helmet.

“Can’t help it, I’m excited.” Santana bounces on the balls of her well-worn black and gold high top Dunks as she puts her own helmet on. 

Santana climbs onto the bike first, getting it ready and balancing it before Brittany climbs on, her strong thighs securely squeezing the bike and Santana. Brittany scoots as close to Santana as safely possible, leans her head on Santana’s back and hugs. Santana kicks the engine on and its loud grumble fills their ears and shakes the bike with energy. 

“Ready, babe?” Santana turns her head back for Brittany to hear. 

“Always,” Brittany says.

Santana slowly rolls the motorcycle forwards, out of her driveway, before pulling up her legs and driving out onto the street and then turning into the wide lanes of the Pacific Coast Highway headed north. Brittany doesn’t know it yet, but they’ve got reservations at _Moonshadows_ for the sunset and she’s getting a matching safety pin necklace of her own and, if Santana’s lucky enough, maybe a ring for a certain finger.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [It Always Happens in Dana Point](https://archiveofourown.org/works/595647) by [devilduckieee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilduckieee/pseuds/devilduckieee)




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